On  2012-02-25,  I wrote that I wanted to use Perl more often. I tried
  that. I think Perl is "okay". What I really like is code like this:

    1   my $foo = "2012-07-13";

    2   if ($foo =~ m/(....)-(..)-(..)/)
    3   {
    4           print "$1, $2, $3\n";
    5   }

  Yes, it's a stupid example. It illustrates, though, how easy it is  to
  work  with  regexes.  There's  a  lot  of shortcuts like that. I think
  that's pretty nice. You can write short code which is  easy  to  read.
  You can -- you're not forced to.

  Roughly equivalent code in Python 3:

    1   import re

    2   foo = "2012-07-13"

    3   m = re.match(r'(....)-(..)-(..)', foo)
    4   if m is not None:
    5       print(m.group(1), m.group(2), m.group(3))

  This  is  worse  in every aspect. It's harder to *write* and harder to
  *read*. Well, whatever. I'm not forced to use Python for everything.

  On the other hand, Perl can be very confusing. Just search the web for
  "perl  pitfalls".  Or  think  of  the  sigils,  different contexts for
  variables and what not. That's just a little bit too  much  (or  maybe
  I'm simply not yet used to it -- shell scripts aren't that better).

  Enter  Ruby. I never had a closer look at Ruby because I thought of it
  as "a modern version of Perl" -- and I didn't like Perl at that  time.
  But! It appears to be true. Ruby eliminates a lot of Perl's annoyances
  while keeping the candy.

    1   foo = "2012-07-13"

    2   if foo =~ /(....)-(..)-(..)/
    3           puts "$1, $2, $3"
    4   end

  Isn't that nice?


                           ____________________


  time_t party!

       At 11:01:20 UTC on July 13, 2012, the Unix time number will reach
       0x50000000 (1,342,177,280 seconds).