The Perl guy in Python land

From AJS.COM

The Perl guy in Python land is a series of essays that I have planned to document my exploration of the Python programming language, mostly for work purposes. But first, let me introduce myself.

Who am I?

I'm Aaron Sherman, a programmer of some 30ish years. For a fair chunk of that time I'd say about 50-75% of what I've done has been in Perl with the rest being a smattering of shell, C, C++, SQL and whatever else came to hand. I'm a contributor to the core Perl distribution, though only in a small areas. It would certainly be fair for me to claim to be a Perl expert, though most of my knowledge is fairly dated at this point, and I find myself relying on friends to keep me up-to-date with the latest modules and usage conventions.

So, the "Perl guy" part of the title is definitely in reference to my extensive work in Perl, but it shouldn't be assumed that I'm a Perl advocate. I've never been much of a language advocate, really. I defend language constructs when I think they need defending and I decry them when I think they're in need of that. I try not to restrict this to a single language, but rather see language features as a sea of choices and picking which to support and which to reject.

So why Python?

I'm now working for a company that writes almost everything (at least everything new) in Python or C with smatterings of other languages here and there (and in a large company, "smatterings" can be pretty huge). So, it's part of my new job to learn Python. I thought it would be good to document my learning curve as a way to look back and recall how I warmed up to the language (or didn't) and also as a sort of roadmap for others who wanted to learn Python.

Is Perl no longer The Thing?

I haven't given up Perl. I daren't count how many lines of Perl are in my personal library, but it's certainly not a small number, and I still do interact with some Perl on a professional basis, but my focus is shifting because of external factors. I'll always reach for Perl for certain applications, and I can't imagine ever having a machine where it isn't installed. So no, I haven't drunk the Python Cool Aid, I'm just learning a new language, which I do from time to time.