Hello, On Wed, 10 Mar 2010, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
On Wed, 2010-03-10 at 20:20 +0200, Johan wrote: [..]
I am sorry. Not enough data. Because I did not know myself what I needed. But as the replies came in and looking at the programs, I came to the conclusion, that it must be a low learning curve. Do not need it for a living, just fun.
Then I re-suggest Tcl/Tk. See http://tcl.tk. There is a Usenet group accessible via google (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/topics?hl=en) for it (and most other languages) where you can ask when you stumble. It is a very friendly and helpful group. They are very welcoming to beginners. It is in fact a very simple language. The rules are few, and it is consistent. Don't let age decide for you. You may be surprised what you can do. And there is encouragement to be had.
I don't know Tcl (but respect it). I know perl (/Tk). As someone remarked, it can come very easily (see non-random) sigs 1 and 2. On the other paw, perl can be almost unreadble. A mess. So, as easily as some aspects of perl will be (esp. the "like a natural language" syntax stuff, e.g. '[do] $foo unless $bar'), that you can often express the flow of the logic 1:1 in perl, just as easily you can make it an utter mess. So, it'll take some discipline on the programmer's part. Then, perl scripts can be quite understandable and easy and even fun to read. And with CPAN, you've got a wealth of superb solutions already out there (but also some crap). And perl is very efficient in bolting together external tools and(!) parsing their outputs and juggle their arguments. More than a bash (maybe a zsh ...). And there's tons of good dokumentation, from absolute beginner to hacking perl's guts level. apropos perl | grep '^perl' is quite exhaustive. Start with 'man perlintro', familiarize yourself with 'perldoc -q', find a copy of 'Learing Perl' ... Oh, and then there's the perl-golf fun part. Though not even "perl-golf", trying to figure out how and why the following perl expression works is fun and educating: $max = [$a => $b] -> [ $a <= $b ]; ## Simon Cozens (luckily, that one doesn't get reworked by B::Deparse :) Oh, yes: there's a bunch of tools to help you tweak / grok code. Most notably: B::Deparse. Just run: perl -MO=Deparse -e 'some perl expression;' to see what perl actually does. -dnh, selecting a number of perl-sigs ;) -- Perl is the successful attempt to make a braindump executable. -- Lutz Donnerhacke %% Perl is strange, wonderful, awe-inspiring, mentally stimulating, intellectually inspiring, and whole bunch of other great things that are great in a use-it-where-I-won't-get-paged-about-it-at-0300 sense. -- Anthony de Boer %%
Wow, and everyone swears [Python]'s better than Perl. Wait, you don't say it's worse, never mind. -- Satya The axis on which Perl sits is rotated 90 degrees with respect to the rest of language-goodness-space. -- Garrett Wollman %% Perl - the only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. -- Keith Bostic %% Boy, you can find /everything/ on CPAN now. Modules for moving countries? Cool. Probably redrawing borders based on some sort of array of points, I'm guessing. -- C. Rovers %% CPAN is a medium because anything well done is rare." -- (mis)quoting Fred Allen %% A Perl program is correct if it gets the job done before your boss fires you. -- Larry Wall -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org