Perl vs. Python

Which language should I learn first?

Better go with brainfuck then.
Sorry Mr. Wall, it's cleaner than Perl.

>>41
If you think that Perl is not clean enough you are doing it wrong.

Why not use Ruby instead?

>>43
Yeah, I've been thinking this the entire thread.

>>44
SLOW AS FUCK

>>45
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=yarv&lang2=perl
they seem fairly similar to me.

>>42
I write pretty clean Perl. My coworkers find it readable and easy to understand (once they get past the initial ``ew, Perl''). Though if I haven't touched the language in a few months I get bitten by really dumb multiple assignment gotchas.

I would never trust a stranger to write good Perl.

>>46
>Ruby used: 105x memory
gc is shit

>>48
yeah because cherry picked extreme values that don't match any of the rest of the data in a set are the best values to make decisions on.

>>48
Too bad Ruby is [b][u][i]SLOW AS FUCK[/b][/u][/i].

I'll proceed to commit sudoku now.

While I strongly prefer to stuff a Python dildo (vs a Perl semi-firm turd) into my anus, I cannot ignore the fact that Python's version of using syntax as indentation is utterly retarded (unlike Haskell which will complain if you indent it wrong) because it is seemingly designed to facilitate errors, you can mess up a control structure accidentally and only notice it because of a strange bug.

>>52
Nah it just goes in line with the Python philosophy: compile-time checks? What are those?

>>53
No, this is not the case.  Python syntax is designed for these errors.  E. g.  you have
while 1:
    a()
    b()
    c = len_(dicks)
d(anii)
e = f(g)
[code]
and all of sudden your program starts acting weird.  You look at Git commits one by one, do git bisect, pull a few hairs, tell the other guys, read commits again, until you find that [code]d(anii) should actually be inside the while loop and someone accidentally pressed a tab in the wrong place and never noticed.  Both versions are valid, but only one does what you want it to do.

I have considered ending each syntactic block with a pass, which will also help python-mode to always indent properly.  This is simply a non-problem in C-derived languages, other than javashit with its marvelous
blah();
blah();
return // Ha! Ha! I am returning an object!
Object()