Hi Maarten,

On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 08:59:36AM +0100, Maarten wrote:

> Saw this discussion and found it interesting, got a somewhat half on 
> topic question. I've been trying to decide on a language to learn, 
> python and perl both stood out. There seems to be various discussions of 
> why one is better than the other, and the pro's and con's of both. From 
> what I've seen perl has been around longer than python and there are 
> plenty of places to ask for help and lots of perl modules to use in your 
> code. Python on the other hand seems newer, also has modules(probably 
> less than perl), and has quite bit of community around too. However 
> lately I've been seeing that there are more python projects than perl, 
> making me think python might be the better one to go for. So I am more 
> wondering what peoples opinions on this mailing list are when it comes 
> to python or perl, that way I can consider the opinion of people who 
> have been programming for a while before I make a decision to what I am 
> going to do ;)

This is an absolute no-brainer: go for Python.  There are IMHO many
reasons for that, some are subjective, some are objective.  My personal
prediction is that the use of Perl will decrease during the time and
that Perl 6 will never gain a significant "market share" in
programming land.  I think even part of the Perl community "fears" the
same.

See also the TIOBE index (http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/) although
do not consider this table to be a reflection of good taste ;-).

And go for Python 3.  Although Python 2 and 3 are almost compatible
(which Perl 5 and 6 are definitely not, which is part of the problem),
when starting to learn better stay with Python 3 from the beginning.

Because you asked: I've been programming for 30+ years (and using
UNIX for the same amount of time) and have used a large number of
languages (of course including Perl).  Python has become my favorite
language, although for some things I have to switch to C or even JS.

Hope this helps a bit.

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