Newbie Here

[Magnus Lycka]

Mark Sargent wrote:
> A question I have, is, those of you who use it 
> for the same things, what do you primarily use it for.

Erh, I'm sure different people use it for very different things.
In contrast to e.g. PHP or bash, Python is a very generic language
usable for most preogramming tasks. My answer would be "almost
everything when I need to do programming or calculate something".
I mainly complement Python with some SQL for work with databases
and C/C++ for performance, some integration, or when I have to,
due to "external forces". Actually, it's almost always the third
reason. It's very rare that I skip Python for performance reasons.

Note that Python is a very good "team player". It's often not a
matter of using Python OR [insert some other language] but rather
Python AND [insert some other language]. Of course, some languages,
such as Perl and Ruby are reasonably similar to Python, and using
them together will probably add little. I guess the Python/SQL/C/C++
combo is fairly common.

People use Python for various small scripts, for major business
applications, many different web systems, for image processing
(for everything from weather maps to Star Wars animations), as
embedded macro language in large applications, as a programmable
calculator, for data integration and conversion etc etc.

For a "business case" perspective on Python, look at www.pythonology.com
For coding examples, look at the Python Cookbok. See
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Python/Cookbook/

Other relevant sources for information for a newbie are...
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/
http://www.uselesspython.com/