Hi, I'm new to python

[Jerry]

I would definitely suggest checking out the documentation at http://
www.python.org/doc/.  Also, you can check out the free book Dive into 
Python at http://www.diveintopython.org.  It provides a great overview 
starting at the very beginning.  I found it great and hope to buy it 
soon to support the author.

Python is considered a general-purpose language (so is Perl by the 
way.)  It can handle anything from processing text, to running as an 
application server (check out http://www.zope.com.)  You can also use 
pieces of it for web programming.  In fact, if you've heard of Ruby on 
Rails, then you can see a similar Python project called TurboGears at 
http://www.turbogears.com.  If you only need a web framework, then you 
can also check out Django (http://www.djangoproject.com) and many 
other projects designed for getting a web-based application up and 
running quickly.

Not to leave you with the impression that it's really only suited for 
web stuff, there is also Pygame (http://www.pygame.com), a library and 
bindings to SDL so you can write your own games.  I am currently 
learning Pygame with OpenGL and writing a simple clone of SpaceWars.

I've also written a Jabber bot in Python for use where I used to 
work.  You can use Python for systems automation as well.  I wrote a 
small applet that opened SSH connections to every server in a list and 
then sent all the text you typed into a single box to all servers at 
the same time.

I'm currently learning how to use Python with osascript to control 
applications in Mac OS X and have dabbled a little with the win32com 
stuff to have Python control some aspects of Windows.

As you can see, it's an extremely versatile language and is really 
only limited by your imagination.

There are some things that it doesn't do so well, but for the most 
part, those things have solutions.  For example, Python is typically 
slower than other languages when you must iterate over something many 
times.  For example, in game programming, to iterate over the entire 
list of objects in the world to update their positions or draw them.  
Many times things like this can be moved into C libraries to make then 
run faster.  I myself haven't had many problems with this at all.  In 
fact, none of my iteration code is in C for my game.

Well, that's enough rambling for me.  I've turned this post into a 
commercial for Python.  I hope that I've left you with enough ideas to 
get started in the language.

--
Jerry H