What's the difference between ln -s and alias?

Question

I just found a workaround for a problem I was having with the subl command for Sublime Text 3 when the MacPorts version of python is installed. The instructions

Answer 1

I think you may be missing something in your alias command above -- it should have the form alias mumble="substitution" and will cause any command you type beginning with mumble to be replaced by substitution. So if what you entered in your profile was alias subl="/Applications/path//to/subl" then whenever you type subl at the start of a command, it is replaced by the full path.

ln works by creating a reference in the file system from one thing to another.

The link you provide above suggests that ln will not work with the version of Python provided in MacPorts.