Does Python compete with Java?

[Kyler Laird]

I've only caught bits of this thread and I don't really want to address
any one post in particular but I thought a timely example is in order.

I have been needing to get more control over bookmarks in the PDF files
I concatenate.  I've tried a bunch of tools but my current favorite is
iText.
	http://itext.sourceforge.net/
It's written in Java and I thought I could make some simple mods to the
example concatenation program with my *very* rusty Java skills.  Nope.
I spent an afternoon trying to figure out how to do it without any luck.
I gave up.

After I regained some strength, I decided to throw Jython at it.  I had
not used Jython for anything more than to verify that it really worked.
Within minutes I was interactively poking my way through iText libraries
with Jython, discovering what I could do.  My enhancement was fairly
easy to implement and it reminded me how much less effort it takes to
accomplish things in Python than in Java.

Bottom line...I don't give a hoot about a language "competition."  I'm
going to keep using Python because it allows me to accomplish Great
Things.  It even lets me do those where C or Java are "required."  I
like it.

--kyler