Upon reflection...

[Rod Weston]

I sympathize with your frustrations concerning my methods in my quest.
 And I agree that I may end up 'collecting' languages if I become
frustrated with Ada, but I have made a serious effort to minimize the
possibility.

My initial selections were based upon what seemed to be the most
profitable languages to learn and I came to the forums utilized by
expert users of the various languages for further information. After
all, it's here that you all complain about the shortcomings of your
respective languages or, more constructively, query other expert users
for ways to circumvent or resolve these limitations.  It's here that I
learned about the apparent slowness of Python - well, that and trying
the Python Solitaire game.  I'm open to hearing more and I'm not going
to stop reading the newsgroup just because I've made a decision. 
Python is very, very popular - there's got to be a reason for the
popularity and it's not going to be a bunch of hype as is the case
with Java and C++.  I initially assumed that I would be learning Java
and C++ - after all, they are today's standard - but I decided to make
a slightly educated leap rather than a totally blind one.  I started
looking into what other languages make the world go around... I've
already stated my criteria.  I'm not saying that I'm right or that
I've made an exhaustive analysis (by the way, I chose not to pursue
smalltalk because Ada has much more free and low-cost resources
available) and I'm certainly not trying to persuade others to follow
me, especially not to leave Python on my suggestion; I just wanted to
provide my feedback to the excellent folk who have generously given of
their time and expertise to my quest.  Perhaps in a year I'll be
lamenting my choice, but I have made a choice rather than risk the
paralysis of analysis and I believe it is a good one.  It will allow
object-oriented programming, or not.  It imposes structure which will
improve my programming skills.  It will stop those damned 'non-numeric
data where numeric required' messages that I hate so much.  It will
trap errors during compilation on a multitude of platforms.  It will
run very fast, if I optimize for speed.  It will compile to a small
executable if I optimize for size.  And it will be very readable which
will be a pleasant change.  I'll give you all some feedback in another
six months, after I have some solid experience under my belt - though
it will not be qualified comparison with Python nor will I represent
it as such.

Thanks again.

Rod Weston