Python

[Roy Smith]

"vernon ward" <vern600r at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Presently I am changing my career. I am thinking of going into IT security, 
> namely penetration and vulnerability testing. Do you think it would be 
> beneficial to me to learn Python as I've been advised that I need to know a 
> bit about programming.

That's a rather open-ended question, and can be answered on a number of 
levels.  I'll take a shot at two possible answers.

>From the point of veiw of "Will it make me a better programmer in the 
long run?", the answer is "Yes, you should learn Python".  It is not the 
be-all and end-all of programming languages, but it is practical and 
useful, and relatively easy to learn.  It will also introduce you a 
number of modern programming concepts such as OOP (Object Oriented 
Programming).  While not quite mainstream yet, it is gaining in 
popularity, and has reached the point where most people in the industry 
have at least heard of it, even if they don't know much about it.

>From the point of view of "What will help me land a paying job the 
fastest?", I'm afraid I need to give a different answer.  If your goal 
is to find gainful employment in the IT industry, Perl would be a better 
choice.  It's a evil language from many points of view, but it is also 
(for good or bad) the most common language in the field for sysadmin 
types.  Not being able to put Perl on your resume will be a much bigger 
detriment to getting an interview than not being able to put Python on 
your resume.

So maybe my advice is to learn both.  Perl will get you interviews, and 
once you've got the job, you can forget you ever heard about it and just 
do all your work in Python :-)  Knowing both will also expose you to two 
very different ways of doing things, and then you'll be able to draw 
your own conclusions.