Re: Book questions

[Iain M Conochie <iain@thargoid.co.uk>]

On 12/04/15 17:34, David Wright wrote:
> Quoting Iain M Conochie (iain@thargoid.co.uk):
> <snip>
> > IMHO, the issues with perl and python is that you will have to
> > understand Object Orientated Programming (OOP) to get the most out
> > of them, especially for GUI development. This was one of the reasons
> > I drew a blank with perl. This may or may not be the case. Brett,
> > any opinion on this?
> Oh gosh, I wouldn't just rely on the advice of one or two people here
> to make your decision. If you type any of   perl vs   or   python vs
> or   ruby vs   into google and see the suggestions, then click on a
> few of them and you will find a lot of knowledgeable discussion of the
> issues (amongst a wealth of prejudices, of course).
>
> If the programs/tools you want to write have GUIs, then you're not
> going to avoid OOP so that's not really an issue.

OOP is a big issue for me :)
>   However,it might
> help to see if the way languages handle objects seems natural to
> you. And really, that's the case for the languages themselves...what
> fits you best. There's also something to be said for seeing what other
> people in your field are using as you may want to call upon this
> community to help solve problems you run into.
Sad as it may seem, I am on my own in this. Hence trying to solicit 
other opinions on this matter, of which yours is most welcome.
> BTW do check the dates of any discussion. These languages are still
> actively evolving so opinions date, and change. My recollections of
> Perl are from 20th century perl4 and consequently inconsequential:
> OOP came with perl5. And perl6 is round the corner (but has been for
> a decade). I'm ignorant of Ruby, which is seen as another horse in
> this stable (procedural scripting; far from C).
From a sysadmin point of view (and this is probably about 4-5 years out 
of date) ruby is horrible. A bigger memory hog than java, and it seemed 
like a passing fad.

My hate / love / hate of perl (and probably OOP) comes from a long 
winter of learning the perl by building an auto-updating website, then I 
wanted to add the data into a mysql DB and finding myself lost and not 
being able to do what I wanted to do. This was perl 5.0.4 (which 
probably gives my age away ;) However, it recently came through for me 
and I was able to use it to build a shell script.
> Also bear in mind that while books are fine for learning from, and
> consolidating your knowledge, once you start seriously using any
> language the web resources will be essential because most books in
> this area are out of date before they're even published.
Ahh - a beautiful statement, and music to my ears. I am sadly lacking in 
a formal education in computer science, but the internet is my tutor, 
and I have learned exactly what I need to learn. No more but probably a 
bit less.

Cheers,
Iain