[Info-vax] Most popular application programming languages on VMS ?

[Craig A. Berry]

On 1/10/19 1:01 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2019-01-10, Kevin Monceaux <Kevin at RawFedDogs.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 02:19:57AM -0000, Simon Clubley via Info-vax wrote:
>>   
>>> I use "limited" in the sense of what you can use Perl/PHP for when
>>> compared to Python.
>>
>> Since one can find modules on CPAN to do just about anything with Perl,
>> I would hesitate to call it limited.  But I prefer Perl over Python.
>> I've tried for years to develop a fondness for Python.  It hasn't
>> happened yet.
>>
>>> Can Perl or PHP be directly integrated into an application in the
>>> same way as Python can ?
>>>
>>> https://docs.python.org/2/extending/embedding.html
>>
>> I haven't tried it with Perl, but from the documentation it looks like
>> it can be:
>>
>>      https://PerlDoc.Perl.org/perlembed.html
>>
> 
> Thank you for the link. That's what I was looking for and didn't know
> if Perl (or PHP) had. I tried doing a search for all three (Python,
> Perl and PHP) before posting and only turned up the link for Python
> (which I already knew about).
> 
> Given that Perl has this ability to directly integrate into applications
> as a scripting engine that indeed ends my opinion of it being "limited".

Well, that's a start.  Yes, Perl has had embedding since ages.

> The question then becomes why is Python used directly as the scripting
> engine in multiple applications I have encountered yet I have still to
> see a single Perl based scripting engine in an application ?

I have never encountered an application that embeds Python, but that
doesn't lead me to believe it isn't possible.

> I wonder if it's because Python comes across as being way easier for
> non-professional programmers to learn when compared to Perl.

This is an opinion that's been repeated so often it tends to be regarded
as fact.  Personally I find Python much harder than Perl.  With braces
and semicolons, you can actually see where your blocks and statements
start and end, but depending on having the exact same amount of the
exact same kind of whitespace indents as you do in Python means nearly
every line of code leaves an invisible trap for the unwary to fall into.
  I've certainly fallen into it quite a bit on those few occasions when
I've written anything in Python.

Perl does have regular expressions embedded in the syntax of the
language, and that can be offputting if you don't know regular expressions.

Really the biggest difference between Perl and Python today is that
Python has had massive investment by multiple large companies for many
years now.  Perl has had comparatively much smaller investments, though
its development continues.