Why is Python a good first scripting language?

[Peter Hansen]

Brett g Porter wrote:
> "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
   ^^^^^^

Wow!  "Everything" _plus_ epsilon... that would be impressive. :-)

-content-free-ly yr's,
  Peter