[CentralOH] Why Python? Continued . . .

[James Bonanno]

Eric;

Just some follow up comments to the great links for why Python? and 
these links are grounded and solid. It seems significant that so many 
universities are using Python as the introductory course. When I survey 
all the languages, Object Orientation seems to be easiest to grasp in 
Python, but just as effective as any other language.

I would add another category to the why Python? area, and that is the 
supplemental languages like Cython. I see this as a real and emergent 
way to have C performance when you want it and need it. I would also 
have to say that Numpy, Scipy, etc. have created a sort of 
democratization in engineering, where there is no limitation to the 
number of users of the language, particularly compared to Matlab. In the 
Matlab case, it's easy to spend between 20K and 50K per user in any 
given company. When you add the recurring cost of software maintenance 
to this, you're potentially talking about several hundreds of thousands 
to millions of dollars in savings depending on the number of engineers 
in the company.

James