[GoLUG] Advanced tools for graphing, charting and automating visual designs?

[Steve Litt]

David Billsbrough said on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 23:20:48 +0000

>All,
>
>This is a follow-up to the topic of GoLug's (April) Linux Tales:
>
>The Steve a.k.a (slitt) and the M.C. of GoLug mentioned he likes
>the Lua (https://www.lua.org/) programming language because of its
>simple and well thought out design. Then Steve makes the comment
>that it (lua) would not in its current state be his go to language
>for any and all small programming tasks. The reason and I might
>ready agree is the support library of *standard* available packages,
>modules and extensions are not at the same level as a Python or
>Perl language installed base for any standard O/S distro.

I wouldn't use Perl for all the money in the world. It's a great
language, but Python and Lua and even Ruby are better now. Back when
Perl stood alone in its category, it was a huge productivity booster. I
made a lot of money developing with Perl. But since then, even better
productivity boosters have come along. And I'm sorry, but Larry Wall's
"there are many ways to do it" philosophy in Perl screws me up every
time, especially when modifying other peoples' Perl.

[snip]

>Perl: https://learn.perl.org/modules/ (CPAN) --
>https://metacpan.org/ lets you search the 108,000 modules on CPAN.
>
>Ruby: https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/master/standard_library_rdoc.html
>(GEMS) : https://rubygems.org/gems

When I say "standard libraries", I mean stuff that automatically gets
installed right along with the language, not something you need to go
fishing for on CPAN or gems. Installing stuff from the likes of CPAN or
gems can bork your language and everything that's written in it. Over
20 years ago, at a client site, I installed something from CPAN that
broke the client's Vim. No, I'm not kidding.

Void Linux cautions you against using Python's pip, saying installing
something from there could bork your Python. Void's words, not mine.
Void recommends I do one of those things where I make a whole separate
environment with the downloaded library(s) in it. Doing so is a
complicated recipe, and besides, I don't want a million different
Pythons around. Python's standard library that gets installed with
Python is sufficient for darn near any job.



SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21