Hello Suresh

From the technology point of view - both mod_perl (Perl) and Python are
equally powerful, scalable and feature-rich.

Python's syntax is cleaner and more readable than Perl. Python
emphasizes on the philosophy of "There should be one—and preferably only
one—obvious way to do it" - which means code written by one programmer
would be easily understood and maintained by others. Also, Python
"imposes" discipline on programmers in terms of indentation and syntaxes
- which allows large-scale applications maintainable in the long run.
Python is a lot easier to learn and master.

Perl, on the other hand is more like a magic wand. Perl gurus often
consider themselves as wizards/magicians with a powerful tool in hand.
Perl tends to be a highly expressive language rich in syntax and
emphasizes on the philosophy - "There should be more than one way to do
it". But in my experience, skilled Perl programmers today are becoming a
rarity. Perl as a language has a very steep learning curve when compared
to Python. Perl also has a reputation of being a "write-only" language.

But it is still considered as a language of choice for developing
applications that involve manipulating very large/complex data
(Bio-informatics, Data mining, Log processing, process automation and so
on). However, creating large-scale applications in Perl require proper
co-ordination amongst developers - which involve adhering to
well-defined and uniform syntax and semantics, coding standards and
guidelines.

If you are going to develop an enterprise e-commerce application that
would be maintained by many developers in the long run - many of who
might be new to both Perl/Python, I would recommend Python for quicker
productivity - unless of course, you are highly inclined to think like a
Perl wizard.

Thanks

Bluesky