Is it worth learning python?

[stibbs]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002 15:42:53 -0400, Raphael Ribeiro wrote:

> I wanna start learning some real programming language (I know now only
> Visual Basic , but i don't find it interesting ,sorry for the vb
> programmers, but this is my opinion). And I was reading some docs ,
> which were talking about lots of programming languages, I saw there
> Python , and took a look at some python sites. I saw some snippets and
> read some docs and liked the language a lot. But I don't know if this
> language is well-accepted in the market and if having a good python
> knowledge would give me a good job.. 

The best advice you can get on which languages are hot for the job
market these days is by going to dice.com. Do a search on 
the OS you use and a language:

unix python

or

windows python

be sure to do searches on other popular languages..

perl, ruby, php, c++, c, and java.

php is pretty easy to learn and you can find a job if you know it. my
guess is python and ruby will have the least amount of jobs available.

out of the scripting languages perl is what is in demand.

>I am only 17 and I'm only making
> plans, so if you have any suggestions tell me.

I would suggest you learn python and perl. python to learn on because it
seems you like it, and perl because it's used in the real world a lot in
unix or e-commerce oriented work. Plus ifyou learn perl, php should be a 
breeze because besides the OOP part of php, perl and php are similar in
syntax. If i were you i would start off by making small scripts in python
and then port them one by one to perl.

OR

learn python and java, there is something called jython and once you
know both you can have access to all the java classes and modules through
python (plus all of pythons). jython puts out java byte-code so
*basically* you can program in python to make java applications.

why not just learn perl or java? because once you have experienced learning
through python's interactive interpreter you're addicted :). ruby also
has an interactive interpreter and is fully OOP, might want to have a
look for fun.

if you use unix or linux as your main OS i would suggest the python + perl.
If you're main OS is win, i would suggest the python +java.

www.jython.org
www.perl.org
www.ruby-lang.org

Happy language hunting!
stibbs
> 
> Raphael Ribeiro