As someone replying to the discussion topic, you may choose any interpretation of "best" that you wish. In fact, that would be preferred, as it would probably produce more interesting discussion than me attempting to rigidly define "best" in order to allow someone to post "given your definition of 'best', language Y is 'the best'".
How about this: which language's OO implementation do you like the best, and why?
I was hoping it would lead to comments such as, "$lang1's OO implementation is good, except that it's missing $feature_X and $feature_Y, which means I can't do $technique_Z", or "$lang2's OO impl is more useful to me than $lang3's because it allows me to do $U and $V which I can't do in $lang3".
The OP asked about what you are currently learning. Many folks may actually be required to learn it for their job, rather than for professional enrichment.
Possibly of interest: Here's a regularly-updated plot by Georg Brandl showing the number of Python 3 packages in the PyPI: http://dev.pocoo.org/~gbrandl/py3pkgs.png
The Perl folk are being very bold, IMO. With Parrot and Rakudo, they're saying that you can write code in Perl 6 and utilize libs in other languages (including the CPAN in Perl 5), or you write code in other languages and still have access to all those libraries.
That is, they must be quite confident that Perl 6 is a winner, and that most users won't just write, say, Python, run it on Parrot, and make use of the CPAN from there.
(Please tell me if I'm totally missing the point, but my understanding is that any Parrot-hosted lang can access any other Parrot-hosted lang's libs.)
Perl (especially Perl 6, if/when it reaches completion) and Python fill very different temperamental niches. They have profoundly different takes on programming, despite their similarities in terms of both being high-level, interpreted languages. So it seems likely that both will be around for a good long while.
If many languages start using Parrot as a VM, it will moderate the current "rich get richer" dynamic of programming language competition. A language leading in the module race will no longer have such a huge advantage. This will help Perl 6 immensely, of course, since it will start out with very few Perl 6 modules. They'll need to get the Perl 5 CPAN modules working on Parrot to compensate, and it is a happy side-effect that this will make these same modules usable by any other languages running on Parrot.
Also, a point the article doesn't mention is that Perl 6 itself is designed to be a mutable language. Going one step beyond the article, why implement a whole new language at all, just to add/try out a new concept? It may be simpler to instead modify the Perl 6 parser (written in Perl 6 of course) to add your new concept to the syntax and semantics of Perl 6.
I love the idea. I just hope there's actually a ready-for-production implementation of Perl 6 running on top of Parrot at some point.
> The problem isn't the time spent in school, the problem is the school itself.
Actually, that's not enough detail. "School" is a complex system consisting of many parts -- all of which have their issues. Parents play a big role, in so far as what they expect from their children, their local board of ed, and their superintendent.
> We teach people to be the status quo, we don't encourage them to excel.
You'd be amazed at the forces in place that so strongly coerce teachers to stick to the status quo.
It's sad. All of the teachers that are forced to teach to the status quo do so because money is on the line. If a school doesn't conform to the guidelines set down by the government, then they don't get funding. This is a classic example of a law that is meant to help failing miserably, and even making things worse.
And you can't really blame the teachers. They need to make a living, and they barely do as it is. I hate the fact that we seem to value our teachers so little.
> It's sad. All of the teachers that are forced to teach to the status quo do so because money is on the line.
There's more to it than just that, actually. What happens when a teacher demands excellence? Well: grades drop, students (mostly the mediocre ones) complain, parents complain, teachers must do far more grading (and be forced to back it up -- every single point), other faculty members can get disgruntled, administration wants to know how this will impact standardized test scores (because they have to answer to the superintendent who insists that the scores go up every year or else you're doing something wrong).
I disagree. Python regexen are a royal pain compared to how they work in Perl. You know what would be pretty funny is if a rogue group of guerilla programmers hacked Perl style regex match and replace syntax into Python.
Heheheh, boy would that get some bees in some bonnets on the Python dev ML. :)
