[SWLUG] Programming language for a dummy

[phantomjinx]

On 01/08/10 09:35, Matthew Moore wrote:
> On 31/07/10 07:58, Gerald Davies wrote:
>    
>> On Friday, July 30, 2010,<matt at matthewmoore.org.uk>   wrote:
>>      
>>> I guess I could just 'pick one' but I'm just looking for some
>>> recommendations.
>>>        
>    
>> I know Java gets a lot of stick, but found that very easy to learn years ago.
>>      
> I did Java at uni and really hated it.
>
>    
I work with Java everyday and really enjoy it. Horses for courses... ;)
>> Perhaps try a few and see how you get on? I know people that are
>> uttery useless in one language, but fine in another.
>>      
> That's quite a good idea.
>
> On 30/07/10 17:19, Terry John wrote:
>   >  Sounds like you need to think on how you collect your info to get it
>   >  into a format you are familiar with. If you are to use an unfamiliar
>   >  language to do that then once your data is in a familiar form it will be
>   >  easy to work on.
>
> I'm generally messing with fairly standard stuff, either lists of users,
> or lists of networking addresses or syslogs.  It's either in .csv files
> or .txt files and they usually (but not always) have a standard format.
>
> Python does seem to be the standard recommendation from many, I'll
> definitely give that a whirl.
>
> Out of interest, does anyone on here use Ruby?  What's that like?
>    
Done some Ruby and found it quite a powerful scripting language but a 
little more accessible than perl. I would recommend this for tasks such 
as string manipulation and directory tinkering.  Perl is obviously the 
best at this sort of thing but has a steeper learning curve.

> Thanks for all the suggestions, it's given me plenty to think about.
>
>    
Just my two penneth

PGR