[pvaldes]

Is this true or is a belief?

The fact is that most people don't even have an opinion about what is Python or Perl.

Python can seem easy to share after you copy part of a python script and miss one blank space somewhere at the end of a line or start copying in the wrong line. If you use a dumb text editor the script will easily turn into a ugly mess. Perl scripts don't have this problem, so some people could say that they are easier to exchange and share in fact.

Many Perl authors will be really glad to share your code with you. This is what they built an online community of knowledge and libraries called CPAN where you can find it easily. To find authors willing to help and explain obscure parts of their own scripts also if asked politely, is not uncommon or particularly difficult.

[mangecoeur]

> part of a python script and miss one blank space somewhere at the end of a line or start copying in the wrong line. If you use a dumb text editor the script will easily turn into a ugly mess.

I think we can bury this 'Python has significant whitespace' criticism for good now. I have taught python to people from hugely diverse backgrounds (including literature and law) and not once has this been an issue (on the contrary it's a massive help to readability).

Also, no sane person teaches people to code python with a 'dumb' text editor - you give them Jupyter notebooks or VSCode or PyCharm (which has an excellent educational version) or Notepad++ or something.

[bquinlan]

I think that the comment that you relied to meant that it is easier for scientists to collaborate using a single language rather than many. For some domains, Python has emerged as that single language. That doesn't mean that Python is the best language.

[mangecoeur]

Exactly this. To some extent the language doesn't matter - although I think Python has become especially popular thanks to being one of the easiest languages to learn and use in practice. Then you get lots of network effects - e.g. grad students learn python, and when they become supervisors they teach their students python.

[asdff]

You'd be hard pressed to find someone who only knows python, though. Where there is python data science there is usually also R, like smoke and fire. The syntaxes are similar enough, imo R a little simpler even.

[pvaldes]

This is mediocracy and a bad strategy