Choosing Perl/Python for my particular niche

From: Fred Ma (fma_at_doe.carleton.ca)
Date: 03/27/04

  • Next message: Fred Ma: "Re: Choosing Perl/Python for my particular niche" 
    Date: 27 Mar 2004 07:19:47 GMT

    Hello,

    This is not a troll posting, and I've refrained from
    asking because I've seen similar threads get all
    nitter-nattery. But I really want to make a decision
    on how best to invest my time. I'm not interested on
    which language is better in *general*, just for my
    purpose. My area of research is in CAD algorithms,
    and I'm sensing the need to resort to something more
    expedient than C++, bash scripting, or sed scripting.
    What I hope to do is a bit multifaceted. What I don't
    do dabble in is web apps (though I'm not sure of the
    similarities). No XML processing or database
    interaction in what I do.

    One thing I expect to have to do is to modify design
    files. For example, there is a tool which takes ASCII
    hardware desscription language (HDL) and converts it
    to a C++ (augmented by hardware simulation library).
    The translator is freeware, so has limitations which I
    have to make up for by tweaking the HDL code. In the
    past, I've eeked out sed scripts for such tasks, but
    would appreciate a more traditional language. Since
    Perl is used alot in digital IC design, I took a stab
    at that, motivated by the simple need to convert my
    mail aliases from one mail reader to the other. It
    took a while to do, and I'm concerned at the difficulty
    level. If I did this kind of thing constantly, I
    would probably get proficient and use the power behind
    it, but it's not my main area.

    The alternative is Python, which is easier to read
    from what I've read. My concern there is that I cut
    myself off from large availability of stuff that's
    out there. For example, I use a PC-to-solaris
    viewer called VNC, and I've banged my head against the
    startup script to change it a bit for my situation.
    Likewise, the above translator uses Perl extensively
    in its operation, as well as it's building and
    installation. If I wasn't passingly familiar with
    Perl, I would have had a much harder time installing
    it. Being in the approximate area digit circuits,
    I'm concerned about being on the band wagon, if only
    to avoid reinventing things, or impediments to sharing
    things.

    An additional usage scenario is to (if reasonable)
    replace my shell scripting e.g. I just converted to
    bash from tcsh to write scripts that push a document
    through a series of filters, or simply as a wrapper
    around a tough-to-use utility e.g. pstops. A final
    example is to take a file of design information and
    do more than tweak it e.g. extract all the information
    about interconnections between circuit building blocks,
    including which is the source block, and which are the
    destination blocks. Typically, this information will
    be read by matlab scripts and passed to my C++ code
    (I've managed to avoid writing code to parse the
    input file from C++).

    Whichever way I go, I would like to avoid the overhead
    of learning both Perl and Python. I will sculpt out some
    time in a miserly fashion to slowly get to know one. Since
    I spend most of my time exploring the algorithm in Matlab or
    C++/STL, there's only so much time to pick up higher level
    languages (it took years before I shelled out the time
    to switch from tcsh to bash). One of the things that
    makes the decision not clear is that despite Python's
    claim to a gentler learning curve and clearer code, I
    often like the expedience of sed e.g. a terse one-liner
    that can be pipelined with other shell commands. I
    also note that Perl's unweldiness only comes for big
    projects, and I don't expect to using Perl quite that
    way.

    I've seen mention of parrot and perl6, which is quite a
    ways off. I'm not sure how much that should weigh into
    my decision, since it isn't real yet.

    Thanks for any comments/suggestions. 

    -- 
Fred Ma
Dept. of Electronics, Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario
Canada, K1S 5B6
  • Next message: Fred Ma: "Re: Choosing Perl/Python for my particular niche"

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