On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:00:28 +0000, dave irving <dave.irving@xxxxxxxxx> 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
