language/distro preferences

[Josh Close]

I saw a question in a PHP list about the differences between php and
perl, and what the advantages between the two are, but I think I was
the only person that mentioned anything about python in the
discussion.

This makes me wonder what the python group things about these other languages.

Python vs. Perl. vs. PHP vs. C# (and other .NET languages) vs. Java
vs. C vs. C++ vs. whatever other language you can think of.

I think python is the king of command line. It's way faster than PHP.
It's OO and has exceptions which perl doesn't, and PHP supports very
poorly.

I won't touch Perl with a 10 ft. pole anymore. No need.

PHP I still use for web. Mod_python isn't the easiest language to
write fast web pages in.

I think Java is just terrible. Very very slow. It has a nice size
library, but I really don't care :P.

C and C++ are cool, but take a lot longer to develop in.

I actually like C# quite a bit. I think it's good for windows use and
asp.net. I've seen all the ranting about how much everyone hate's it,
so I won't say any more.

This brings up the question about linux distributions. Which one and
why? I use Gentoo and I think there is nothing better. It's way more
configurable than any other distro. Portage is by far the best package
management system out there. Gentoo makes administration life so much
easier. When I've used redhat in the past (not by choice), I've had to
install most programs by hand because I either couldn't find a stupid
rpm for it, or there wasn't a new enough version rpm available. Yes,
they install instantly, but they are not as up to date or
configurable. I've used suse a little and didn't like it. If I were to
try any other distro, it would probably be linux from scratch. Gentoo
has made my life so much better. I could go on and on..... but I
won't.

Just curious what the python world uses and why.

-Josh