Unix Insider: Pulling different threads – Support means something specific to each language

“Feature charts typically anchor comparative articles. We can’t
do that, though; for us, feature checklists hide more than they
reveal. While the languages certainly differ, sometimes even in
specific dimensions, it’s hard to reduce any of those dimensions to
a single value. We’ve run tests that said Perl was 14 times faster
than Python, and tests that said it was 4 times slower. Such foggy
numbers can’t capture the true character of these languages.”

“The languages have broad personality traits, though. You’ll see
a language differently as you learn about it and use it, and as the
language itself develops through different releases. The essential
character that remains constant is what our last column outlined.
To enrich that illustration, we’ll look at a few details that many
programmers take months to stumble on.”

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