[CentOS] OT: programming language for morons (newbie friendly language in Open Source world)

[Natxo Asenjo]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 11:18 AM, David Sommerseth
<dazo at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On 13/12/10 17:32, Lamar Owen wrote:
>> On Monday, December 13, 2010 11:14:24 am Sven Aluoor wrote:
>>> What programming language should I learn?
>>
>> Python.  You can find useful examples of python code throughout CentOS, beginning the yum itself.  Get yourself a copy of 'Dive into Python' (can be had as a free download, legalling) and, well, dive into python!
>
> I completely agree!  Python is really worth looking at.  And a lot of
> the tools on RHEL/CentOS are written in Python.
>
> <http://diveintopython.org/>
>
> I see quite some people suggest Perl.  I've been in that camp as well,
> but I personally find Python much more intuitive than Perl, and also a
> lot more consistent.  Perl is truly like paint, you can splash the
> colours around just like you want.  The learning curve for Perl is quite
> higher than Python in my experience.

Did you learn Perl first? Then learning something else on top of that
is easier. Programming languages share lots of concepts.

>
> "Dive into Python" helped me to really get started, and it went fast
> with this book.

Modern Perl: http://www.onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/ is also free
to download as a pdf file. Great book to get started.

> Python enforces you to be more consistent, which is not a bad thing if
> you want to understand better what you are doing in the very beginning.
>  Later on Perl, Ruby, C#, Java, C/C++ might be a good alternatives, as
> they probably are much stronger in a lot of fields for more complex tasks.

use strict;
use warnings;

if you write Perl and do not use that, you will have problems, yes.

> But remember each tool has its own use case.  You don't need a hammer
> when you have screws.  It's the same with programming languages.  And
> Python and Perl are often used as the "Swiss Army Knife".  Useful for a
> lot of ad-hoc and not too heavy routine tasks, but you won't rely on it
> when going hunting in the wilderness.

well, Perl helps me daily on the wilderness of my job. I do not
understand the analogy, but it probably is my fault ;-)

>
> kind regards,
>
> David Sommerseth

-- 
regards,
natxo