[LAU] No batch processing on Linux?

[Joel Roth]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 01:00:29PM +0200, Arnold Krille wrote:
> On Saturday 25 September 2010 10:49:35 Chris Cannam wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 8:06 AM, Joel Roth <joelz at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > I guess I am reacting to what I imagine is language
> > > preference projected onto absolute judgment on merits of a
> > > particular language.
> > > 
> > > Perhaps you are speaking from years of software development
> > > experience.
> > 
> > I have quite a lot of (mostly enjoyable) experience writing Perl over
> > the years, including some fairly big programs, and hardly any
> > experience with Python (a language I dislike on instinct).  But my
> > experience with Perl has been that returning to my own projects is
> > harder than it should be, and harder than in languages like C and C++.
> >  That is probably due to my own limitations, particularly when it
> > comes to discipline, but it's empirically true in my case.
> > 
> > The real assumption I made back there was that Python code is any
> > easier to return to -- I haven't the experience to judge, really, I'm
> > just going on hearsay from friends and acquaintances.
> 
> Python actually forces you to be more disciplined. Which really make returning 
> to the code easy.

I believe that's the philosophy that there should be one
right way to approach a particular task. Perl suffers (and
benefits) from its motto TIMTOWTDI (pronounced tim-toady --
this is more than one way to do it.)

> Using python for small apps/tools is easy. Using python for large projects is 
> easy.
> Extending your C/C++-project with python is easy.
> Using your own C/C++ parts in python is easy.

That's a big advantage of python over perl right now: python's
ctypes library. There is a project now to port ctypes to 
perl. 

Perl had previously borrowed Python's object mechanism. Just
now it is finally being replaced, by Moose/Mouse in Perl 5,
and the internal object system in Perl 6.

I, for one, have had a great time with the python-derived
perl object system.

Otherwise, perl's vast CPAN libraries, cover many problem
domains.

> Porting parts of your python project to C/C++ is easy (think prototyping in 
> python and port to compiled-language once the interface is finished and the 
> optimizations begin).

For optimizing perl, we have Devel::NYTProf, which
profiles the time spent in each subroutine. (As the name
suggests, the New York Times underwrote the development
costs.)

> I for one am very glad I learned python a few years back. Its fun.

Good for you!  So is perl. :-)

I thought I would like to learn some other language, either
python, ruby, Tcl or Forth, but usually I have some
practical problem to get done, and the more familiar
language gets used.
 
> Disclaimer: I don't have any experience in perl, but what I get from the perl-
> snapshots in German Linux-Magazin, it looks harder then python...

Perl does have a few syntax quirks. The deferencing syntax
is particularly awkward. There is also the oddity (and
feature) of list/scalar context.

For me, reading music is awkward, and so is reading python,
but I don't blame the notation in either case.

Best,

Joel
 
> Have fun,
> 
> Arnold



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-- 
Joel Roth