I have been teaching a lot of Python. Mostly this has been Python 2, but some clients want Py3. Unfortunately not everyone understands how Open Source language releases work, and some internally assumed that no-one would want Python 2 training as soon as Python 3 was released.
I have to confess that, having done a lot of Python recently, moving back to Perl is rather a drudge. Python is not perfect, but I now find the syntax of Perl unnecessarily fussy, and Perl 6 is even worse. I mean fussy in the sense that Perl code is to Python as a doily is to a beer-mat.
Talking of Perl 6, with the release of Rakudo Star I thought (hoped) that we would get a flood of requests for courses, but we have not had one. Rakudo Star is, I guess, still too early, and I suppose early adopters are happy to learn it themselves.
Meanwhile, roughly half of the delegates that I am teaching Python have come from Perl. There does not appear to be a consistent reason for this, and often it is not the practitioner's decision anyway. It appears to be the perception of where Perl is in the scheme of things. Its all about image and marketting. What can Perl do about that? Perl 6, but Python is catching up.
Here is a simple example. One of the nice things about Perl is the way that lists can be used:
($one, $two, @fred) = qw(The quick brown fox);
Cannot do that in Python 2, but in Python 3:
one, two, *fred = ('The', 'quick', 'brown', 'fox')
The * indicates a greedy list (and you though Python didn't have sigils?). No qw() equivalent yet though, and Perl array and hash slices are still more powerful. Unless you know better...
Now I learn that Civilisation V is using Lua as its scripting language because Python (used in Civ. IV) is too slow. Is Lua next on my list?
