The Industry choice

[Mark Carter]

 > It might be nice if it was widely understood (in IT) that Python was 
a language any competent
 > programmer could pick up in an afternoon

I am a programmer who works for a firm of engineers, where they program 
in VBA, badly. I've often mentioned Python, whereupon I'm usually 
dismissed as a crank. One of them expressed concern that if they used 
Python and I left, then nobody would understand what to do. I could have 
countered that Python is actually quite an easy language to pick up, but 
what's the point.

We might be doing a project which involves web-type stuff. I pointed out 
that if they did, they wouldn't be able to use VB/VBA, and may need to 
use something like Python. I didn't get a reaction from that at the 
time, but no doubt they'll be telling me that I'll have to make Excel 
work through the internet, or something.