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Is this a dream or a nightmare? (Was Re: XML)

Dan Kuchler kuchler at ajubasolutions.com
Sat Oct 7 09:42:15 EDT 2000 
Frank Sergeant wrote:
> 
> > The true beauty of perl is shown in how rapidly a program can be created:
> > a good average for comparison is 1 line of perl for every 25 lines of C,
> > TclTk, Python, or Visual Basic, and every 100 lines of C++.
> 
> I was surprised to see that ratio of 1 to 25 for Perl to Python.  Could you
> say a little about your reasoning in that regard?

I am also fairly surprised by his math.  I have written
a fair amount of Perl, and currently most of my scripting
is done in Tcl/Tk.  I can't think of a single case where it
takes 25 lines of tcl to write something that can be done
in a single line of perl.  There are some cases where it
takes several lines of perl to do something that can be
done in a single line of tcl, and similarily there are cases
where it takes several lines of tcl to do something that
can be done in a single line of perl.

In my opinion tcl, perl, and python share a lot of common
features and functionality.  In fact as time goes on, they
become more similar (in fact in the Perl 6 planning notes
they mention several features of Tcl/Tk that should be
investigated for addition to Perl for Perl 6).

There will always be developer preference, and syntax differences,
but for the most part they offer a fairly similar set of
features and functionality.

There are definitely things that are done easier in Tcl/Tk
and Python than they are done in Perl.  I would guess that
this particular programmer is very experienced in perl,
and not very experienced in some of the other scripting
languages (python, tcl/tk) that he compares to, otherwise
he would not have a ratio of 1:25, unless he is padding
the alternate languages code with 24 lines of comments ;)

--Dan
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