I do programming just for fun. Sometime i do seriously to perform data analysis with python and R. I know python, but i dont really understand or implement the OOP concept (non CS major, i'm biological science student and don't have formal education on IT or programming).<p>I interested to learn perl and ruby. I also have a web application project that i want to create maybe with perl dancer or ruby's sinatra. Which one should i choose to learn (deeply) first, perl or ruby? Which one have the better performance for the same task? Am i to naive if i choose to learn perl first just because it's syntax highlighting already configured on my vi/elvis editor? Any suggestion?
I would suggest Ruby for a few reasons.<p>Perl is so similar to Python especially in its strengths that you would be primarily using one or the other.<p>Ruby has great web framework support with tons of resources and plenty of people for both Sinatra and RoR. With Dancer and other Perl frameworks there's not a lot of info online besides the framework docs.
With Ruby, you can use Heroku, while Perl you're going to need to use a Heroku buildpack to get it working which is more work.<p>I don't know if vi has syntax editing for Ruby, but I would imagine it does.<p>Perl would be easier to learn but wouldn't really give you any extra benefits over Python. It would probably be just as good to use a Python framework, either Bottle or Flask.
Ruby is much more OO, has better framework resources and is different enough from Python that its worth learning
I am programming Perl for a long time. I would say, to me, it is more or less a kind of identity.<p>It is free software. It has a great community. Perl can be used, for batch processing, web development (as you mentioned), data analysis and text manipulation. It is multi-platform. It can interact withe C, C++. Java, Python, etc.<p>Last but not least it has the CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network), a huge repository of free code. If you missing a functionality, surely you will find some options there.<p>Perl is healthy and growing and you can easily be part of its community.