Perl Programmer's Guide to Python

Those who know me may want to sit down for this. It will come as a shock that I have decided to enter the 21st century and learn Python.

I know, I feel like some kind of traitor. But it's time to face facts: while reports of Perl's death are greatly exaggerated; clearly, the only people writing *new* Perl code are dinosaurs like me.

Anyway, this post is NOT a Perl programmer's guide to Python. It is a question for the Internet if such a guide would be appreciated. I found [one](https://everythingsysadmin.com/perl2python.html) that's OK, but I was hoping for more.

One problem with such a guide is one of Perl's slogans: "[There's more than one way to do it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#Philosophy)". I doubt many other Perl programmers use Perl the way I do. I suspect that a real Perl programmer would look at my code and say, "Oh look! A C programmer!" While I might look at code written by a real Perl programmer and say, "Oh look! Line noise!" Anyway, my point is that my Perl Programmer's Guide to Python is likely to be of little help to another Perl programmer.

So anyway, if any of my thousands of readers would be interested in such a guide, let me know.

Update: interesting. I found PerlPhrasebook on the official Python site. I didn't look at it carefully, but I did get a bad first impression. The String Interpolation section does not mention "f-strings" the Python f"bar{foo}" construct, which is clearly the closest analog to Perl's string interpolation. F-strings were introduced 7 years ago (2017), so the PerlPhrasebook has apparently not been updated since then. Acutally, I just checked - it was last updated in 2012. Maybe this suggests that not many people use that document any more? I.e. all Perl programmers who are likely to migrate to Python have already done so? This suggests that maybe writing my own guide is pointless. (Not that pointlessness has ever stopped me from doing something.)

Nice catch, Grammarly

 I was writing an email and accidentally left out a word. I meant to write, "I've asked the team for blah...". But I accidentally omitted "asked", so it just said, "I've the team for blah...".

Grammarly flagged "I've", suggesting "I have". Since my brain still couldn't see my mistake, I thought it was complaining about "I've asked the team...". I was about to dismiss, but decided to click the "learn more" link. It said that, except in British English, using the contraction "I've" to express possession sounds unnatural or affected. As in: "Incorrect: I've a new car".

Ah HAH! That triggered me to notice the missing word "asked". I put it in, and Grammarly was happy. I consider this a good catch. Sure, it misdiagnosed the problem, but it knew it was a problem.

Thanks, Grammarly!

Ok, I guess I like Grammarly (grumble, grumble)

Ok, I grudgingly admit that I like Grammarly.

My complaints still hold: [UPDATE: these are all fixed now]

1. Mac users are second-class citizens. Mac Word integration has the file size limit, and there is no Mac outlook integration. [UPDATE: Mac integration is now good]
2. Their desktop tool won't edit a locally-stored text file. You have to do cutting and pasting. [UPDATE: it integrates well with TextEdit. But not vim.]
3. The file size limit is too small for serious work. Yes, you can do cutting and pasting again, but really? In 2020? [UPDATE: it now operates on large files]

The grumpy old man in me really wants to mumble something about snot-nosed little kids and go back to a typewriter and liquid paper.

But ... well ... I do have some bad writing habits.

Mostly I sometimes write unnecessarily complicated sentences, including useless phrases that I must have learned sound intellectual. It's a little humbling to have it pointed out over and over, but the result of more concise writing is worth it.

Mind you, there are many MANY times that I click the trash can because I don't like Grammarly's suggestions. In much of my technical writing, I use passive voice because active is too awkward. I also deviate from the standard practice of including punctuation inside quotes, especially when the quotes are not enclosing an actual quotation, but instead are calling out or highlighting a technical term, like a variable name. If I tell you to enter "ls xyz," and you type the comma, it won't work. You have to enter "ls xyz". I also sometimes include a comma that Grammarly thinks is not needed, but I think it helps separate two ideas.

Also, Grammarly isn't good at large-scale organization of content, which can have a MUCH greater effect on clarity than a few superfluous words.

In other words, *real* editors don't have to worry about being replaced by AIs for quite a while.

And yet ... and yet ... even with its limited ability to understand what I'm trying to say, it is still improving my writing. In small ways, perhaps. But improvement is improvement.

So yeah, I'll keep paying them money (grumble, grumble).

I want to love Grammarly

UPDATE 2 (17-Nov-2021): Grammarly has released an update, and my first impression is THANK GOODNESS! They either listened to me, or more likely, they knew all along what their drawbacks were. Most of my complaints are now either resolved or at least better. It is now much more native to the Mac and works more cleanly with web pages, Mac's "text edit" app, and Office for Mac. Apparently, it leverages Apple's "accessibility" infrastructure somehow. But it doesn't work with MacVim or the Terminal app. Which doesn't surprise me. Also doesn't work with Teams, which maybe does surprise me a little.

Again, I'll try to write a proper review sometime.

EARLIER UPDATE: I've been using paid-for Grammarly for almost 3 months now, and despite my complaints, I have to say that I like it. I'll leave this post pretty much as I originally wrote it and write a follow-up post when I have time.

I've lived with a bit of a problem almost all my life. I'm a slow reader and a poor speller. I suspect I have a bit of a learning disability.

That's not my problem. If I really do have a learning disability, it is mild; my language abilities are not that far below average. And I'm an engineer, for goodness sake! I'm not expected to have a perfect command of English.

My problem is that I love to write. I've dabbled with fiction, humor, and non-fiction (this blog being a primary outlet). And I want the quality of my writing to be high.

When I had my first exposure to a spell-checker, I was ecstatic! Finally, a tool to save me huge amounts of time. When I first used one that suggested correct spellings, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. But their were still to many thymes that incorrect word choice, usually among homophones, led to mistakes not being caught. I knew that a grammar checker was needed to really get the spelling right.

Microsoft Word, for all the hate that is heaped on it, raised the bar. It catches many problems that "aspell" does not. Word is still not perfect, but it is *good*.

Enter Grammarly. There's a lot about it I really like. For example, instead of just showing you your mistake and offering suggestions, it explains why its a mistake (at least when using the Grammarly editor). I.e. it is both an error checker and a learning tool. I'm using the Grammarly editor to enter this blog post, and it found a couple of things that the Firefox checker did not flag.

... But ... did you notice my mistake in the previous paragraph? "...it explains why its a mistake." The "its" needs an apostrophe. Grammarly didn't catch it. Microsoft did. But neither one caught the "thymes" in the prior paragraph. (Interestingly, the Firefox checker does flag "thymes".) Grammar checking is still an inexact science. UPDATE: The latest version *does* catch the "its". But my point is that it won't be perfect.

But never let perfection be the enemy of good. And there's a lot of good in Grammarly. I really want to love it enough to pay the fee. Why don't I?

My biggest issue is the file size limitation, which does not grow with the paid-for version. I maintain the documentation for our product, and some of those files are pretty big. Way too big, it turns out. I would have to mess with splitting and recombining them. Never mind the annoyance of doing that, the recombining introduces more opportunities for mistakes. UPDATE: The file size limitation seems to be removed now. I can use TextEdit to edit very large files and it seems to work. But it doesn't remember the "errors" that I dismiss; again that seems to be only in the Grammarly editor.

Also, I use a Mac, and Grammarly doesn't integrate with Outlook on Mac. And even the Mac Word plugin is size-limited, although it looks like maybe that limitation would be lifted if I were using Windows instead of Mac. UPDATE: it does now.

Also, it doesn't work well with local ".txt" files except through copy-and-paste. (It can read text files, but not write them.) UPDATE: it does now with TextEdit.

I'll probably pay for a month's worth just to see what the 11 extra suggestions are for this blog post. Maybe seeing them will change my mind. But I kind of doubt it.

EDIT (19-Sep-2020): I did go ahead and shell out for the pro version. So far it has provided a small improvement. Not sure it's worth the cost yet, but still early days. In most cases, it challenges me on something that probably does deserve a second thought, but I ended up keeping as-is.