python or smalltalk for persistence-based app?

[Phil Mitchell]

I need an interactive, OOP language with good support for persistence. I'm
looking at python plus ZODB versus smalltalk and gemstone. I don't know either
language at this point (I know C, Java, Perl). The intended use is to develop
some ideas for a desktop productivity tools framework; there'll be some gui
stuff and a lot of generic info management stuff (eg., managing text data
organized in trees).

Right now I'm leaning towards python, b/c ZODB is open-source and gemstone isn't
(although there's some talk over at squeak of working on such a thing). I don't
have a good sense of the relative depth/quality of libraries (and this is not a
funded project that will be able to buy commercial ones). 

I know that's not a lot to go on, but I'd welcome any thoughts...


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