[Visualpython-users] Python is good

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

You might be interested in this anecdote. This weekend Ruth Chabay is 
participating in a national workshop on bringing more computation into 
the undergraduate physics curriculum. In a plenary session someone got 
up and proclaimed that it was really important to have students use 
standard tools that they could use life-long in their careers, not 
off-beat tools such as Python. With Ruth looking on with interest, a 
knowledgeable participant who is actually engaged in professional 
programming got up and said, "You don't know what you're talking about. 
There is a huge demand for Python programmers, and there aren't nearly 
enough of them." Then a second participant got up and said, "Hallmark 
wanted me to develop a program on a very short deadline, but it had to 
be in C or C++. I explained that it couldn't be done in C or C++ on a 
short deadline, but I could do it in Python, and did."

Independent of these ringing endorsements of Python, the fundamental 
error made by the first speaker was the common one of thinking that you 
learn one tool and use it forever. Professional life isn't like that. 
You need flexibility.

Bruce