"Kevin Cline" wrote in message news:e749549b.0409041928.67714f9b@posting.google.com... > "Randy Brukardt" wrote in message news:... > > "Bj�rn Persson" wrote in message > > news:7g2_c.102478$dP1.364156@newsc.telia.net... > > Marius Amado Alves wrote: > > > > >>> It would also be useful and practical to learn one of the advanced > > >>> scripting languages like Perl or Python or Ruby.... > > >> > > >> Wow, they're *advanced* scripting languages now! > > > > > >Sure, a *lot* more advanced than bat files. ;-) > > > > That's funny, because if it's complicated enough that I can't write a batch > > file to do it, I'll generally write it in Ada. Bat has If and Goto, and that > > is enough for simple tasks. Beyond that, I want to be able to fix it and be > > able to insure that it works... > > Strong typing is handy, but it's not enough to ensure that something > works. Ada has it's strengths, but it's not the tool for every job. > Why would you spend an hour writing 50 or 100 lines of Ada code when > five minutes and a five-line Perl script would do the job? Because it would take a week to learn Perl well enough to use it that way. And it is very rare that such a program is never used again; my one experience with Perl showed it to be a write-only language (it took me two weeks to successfully modify the code that runs the CVS on the ada-auth.org site). And it is very rare that I need to write a 100 line throwaway program; most of my code has much more permanence than that. Summary: It doesn't make sense for me. YMMV. Randy.