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It is pretty much the OO and readability. I worked with Perl for years, and, much to my shame, I really didn't understand a lot of many of the CPAN modules I relied upon. I read the poddoc and then copied the syntax they used and edited to my needs.

Perl provides many, many different ways to achieve the same thing. This is somewhat by design, in the idea that Perl should match your own intuitive style. But most people's styles are not yours, and it becomes impenetrable.

IMHO Ruby's strength over Perl is the much stronger OO, Python's strength is the focus on "there is only one way to do it", which lets most people be able to grok most of your code.

I couldn't go back to Perl by choice now. I first jumped to Python just to get some sense of clarity in my life, but now I prefer Ruby due to how its extreme openness means there are some really awesome gems out there.




  > Python's strength is the focus on "there is only one way
  > to do it", which lets most people be able to grok most of 
  > your code.
Unfortunately this is not my way of doing it, and that's why I'll always prefer Perl to Python.


That is so true. There really is never "only one way to do it" because Programmers think differently.


In other words, coding standards are always useful.


I'd say Python's strength is "explicit is better than implicit." There's usually not too much magic going on.


I really have to agree with this. The Python community has really embraced clarity of code and style as a core principle of the language, while Perl has embraced a more..."do it how you want" philosophy.

It's a bit like the subtle philosophical differences between two dialects of the same language, say Received English and an inner-city slang.


It always get cited as "only one way to do it", but the actual motto is "there should be one obvious way to do it". It's very different.


I think that the full quote is a synthesis of the two:

> There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.

The follow-up I think hammers home the subjectiveness of ‘obvious’:

> Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.




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