Why is Python a good first scripting language?

[Brett g Porter]

"Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com> wrote in message
news:roy-F65D80.09413821102002 at reader1.panix.com...
> news at agapow.net (Paul-Michael Agapow) wrote:
> > Ruby is cool and solid, but the developer community is still
> > small. It's at the point where Python was 3 or 4 years ago.
>
> I find it fascinating that people who know neither Python nor Ruby seem
> th think Ruby is the cooler language.
You know, it's funny -- when the pickaxe book came out, I bought it and
loved it. I wasn't surprised, because I loved Hunt & Thomas' book "The
Pragmatic Programmer." After actually playing/working with the language for
a while, Ruby just didn't click for me at all, though. In Python, everything
[+/- epsilon] works more or less as it 'should' -- I can let go of one
trapeze and be confident that Guido's thrown another for me to catch, and
it'll be right where I need it to be.

But every few months I flip through "Programming Ruby" and get seduced by
the writing in that book again, for a few minutes. I intend no slights
against any of the excellent Python authors, but none of the existing Python
books have hit me that way -- I'm hoping that Alex's Nutshell book does (and
history here in c.l.py makes me think that it will).

--
//  Today's Oblique Strategy (© Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt):
//  Ask your body
//  Brett g Porter * BgPorter at acm.org