Is python for me?

[Dan Lenski]

lennart wrote:
> But I'm not a full-time programmer. I know, that I've only time &
> possibility to learn one (= 1) language good. So i ask myself is python
> the language I'm looking for?

Yep!  Python is very much a jack-of-all-trades language.  I've used it
for similar tasks, including as a front-end for dcraw (I have a little
python script to slurp images from a camera with dcraw and convert them
all to JPEG).

Python has excellent libraries for image manipulation (for example
Python Imaging Library) and for abstracting an SQL database to an
object-oriented form that makes it a snap to work with (I love
SQLAlchemy).

You can learn Python really fast, and it sort of guides you in the
right direction by providing a correct way to do almost everything
without constraining you, so that your code will be consistent and
readable.  This, in my opinion, is Python's chief advantage over Perl,
which is the other highly popular dynamic jack-of-all-trades language.
I learned Perl about 10 years ago and loved it for a while, but it's
messy as heck and I find my own code from a few months ago nearly
unreadable... I also spend a lot more time debugging Perl code because
there are so many error-prone things that are silenty allowed rather
than flagged as errors.

I've been using Python for several months and it's just great for
everything.  I think it's an ideal first or only programming language!
I've had no reason to write a program in anything else since learning
Python, and I write a LOT of little throwaway programs.

Dan