Bruce Eckel, who has written articles and books on Java and C++, has some surprisingly nice things to say about Python in his article at Borland.com: -------------------------- Where does Python fit? Everywhere else. It's both a programming language and a scripting language, but it's very nicely object-oriented from the ground up, easy to learn and use. In fact, I think it could be the ideal beginner's language. You can write command-line programs and GUI programs. You can write programs to test your design, then re-code the programs in C++ or Java once you've gotten the kinks out. But to me the key is productivity. I seem to be able to develop programs 10 times faster than in C++ or Java, and for that reason I'm willing to write programs in Python that I wouldn't trouble myself with in other languages, simply because using those languages would take too long. Although many programs for Linux will be written in Java or C++, there will be lots of smaller solutions as well because of Python. Perl, Tcl/TK, and Rebol will also be used, but I don't think those languages scale as well as Python. Nor is the code they produce as maintainable, which means they won't be as heavily used in the end. http://community.borland.com/devnews/article/1,1714,20173,00.html -------------------------- Bruce's publications: -------------------------- Since 1986, Bruce Eckel (www.BruceEckel.com) has published over 150 computer articles and 6 books, four of which were on C++, and given hundreds of lectures and seminars throughout the world. He is the author of Thinking in Java (Prentice-Hall 1998, freely available at www.BruceEckel.com; 2nd edition in progress on the Web site), the Hands-On Java Seminar CD ROM (available at www.BruceEckel.com), Thinking in C++ (Prentice-Hall, 1995; 2nd edition in progress on the Web site), C++ Inside & Out (Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1993; the 2nd edition of Using C++, Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1989) and was the editor of the anthology Black Belt C++ (M&T/Holt 1994). He was a founding member of the ANSI/ISO C++ committee. He speaks regularly at conferences and is the track chair for both C++ and Java at the Software Development conference. -------------------------- Jeff