I don't think syntax has much to do with readability. Joel Berger posted his thought on a Perl versus Python matchup, but I think that falls into the same trap that most of these arguments do. If we're stuck at the level of syntax, we're really not very good programmers. I don't think any of us choose a language based on the syntax, but that's all we seem to fight about in the comparisons.

I've had the good fortune to have many excellent programmers, and none of the peopl…

[I wrote this for use.perl.org in 2006, but I keep looking for it at the beginning of each year as numeric illiterates try to do the same flawed analysis to prove something about programming languages in the last year (this year it's Andrew Binstock at DDJ). I'm adding it to blogs.perl.org in case use.perl.org (now read only) suddenly disappears.]

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