Why is Python a good first scripting language?

[Michael Stenner]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 09:41:38AM -0400, Roy Smith wrote:
> 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.

< examples snipped >

I came to python from a strong perl background.  And heard a lot of
comparisons of the languages from people of all backgrounds before I
ever tried python.  I even defended perl in the whole "python is
prettier" debate.  (I never did have a problem with the indentation
thing, though).

Then I finally started playing with python, and have never looked
back.  Well, I have looked back enough to port some of my old tools to
python :)

Anyway, the biggest lesson that I have learned is that I now
COMPLETELY ignore comparisons of two languages unless they come from
people who have used BOTH languages EXTENSIVELY.  I say this primarily
because I was incapable of saying anything useful (although I didn't
realize it at the time) until I knew both.

					-Michael
-- 
  Michael Stenner                       Office Phone: 919-660-2513
  Duke University, Dept. of Physics       mstenner at phy.duke.edu
  Box 90305, Durham N.C. 27708-0305