so which would be better perl or python. <blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">I'd suggest Perl. It gives you shell-programming experience, and it's also the basis for a large portion of the websites out there. Plus Perl is very much like PHP, I'm told (I do all my web stuff in Perl, not PHP), so it probably buys you PHP without much work. I've also found that Perl has the smallest gap between "what comes to the programmer's head" and "what the programmer has to type".</blockquote> here i think perl is better. but everyone seems to favour python. are they radically different or just similar cuz you know i only have about 20 days to learn this and i have no previous shell scripting or programming experiance. i am quite sure i can learn both but then i have no idea what i am getting into so i am probably wrong. <div>On 7/15/05, Curt Tresenriter <<a href="mailto:ctres@qwest.net">ctres@qwest.net</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Lee Braiden wrote: > On Friday 15 July 2005 18:33, Mustafa Abbasi wrote: > >>i have recently started using linux and since its my summer vacations i >>wanted to learn a language. > > > I'd recommend Python, without a doubt. It's relatively simple -- enough to be > used for introduction to programming classes -- but also quite powerful, and > popular. > > I've had the same question and was also told Python is a great first language for someone who has no programming experience. Here's a ton of resources... and an occasional podcast on Python from the same guy. <a href="http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html">http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html </a> HTH -- ubuntu-users mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users">http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users </a> </blockquote></div>