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
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