OT: Worth learning python?

[Deron Meranda]

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:00:28 +0000, dave irving <dave.irving at gmail.com> wrote:
> but going forward with Linux is there a good argument for learning
> Python too? If so I might order myself a book!!

Most definitely.  Most of the "glue" in the Linux OS (not the kernel
itself btw),
especially the Red Hat/Fedora distros, is tending to be Python these days.  All
the administrative GUIs are python, yum is python, most things if not C/C++
are python.  And Python is pretty easy to learn compared to most languages,
and is a pleasure to program in.

Just some opinions of a few respected people:

Eric S. Raymond: (Open Source "godfather")
   http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882   -- Very persuasive article

Paul Graham: (Founder of ViaWeb, LISP guru, Antispam filtering)
   http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html
   http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html
   (Second one is a long but insightful essay, Python discussed throughout)

Plus companies like Google and Pixar use Python extensively as their
primary "scripting/glue" language.

I myself have programmed in probably a hundred languages by now,
everything from COBOL to C++ to Haskell, and there are only two
languages I actually prefer to write in now: C++ (for very large complex
projects), and Python (for everything else).  Others may of course have
different opinions and that's fine.  But it's worth checking out Python.
-- 
Deron Meranda