[Tutor] Paython as a career

[Alan Gauld]

"Hussain Ali" <hussainali.hussainali at gmail.com> wrote

> 1) Where does python stand as compared to other programming 
> languages?

That depends on how you measure it.
On functionality? On popularity? On number of active projects on 
Sourceforge?
How do you measure "standing"?

> 2) What is the future for python?

I don't have psychic powers but the short term future is version 3 
growing
and version 2 slowly diminishing. Beyond that I couldn't say.

> 3) Will it survive for long in this rapidly changing trends and new 
> languages?

Provided there is an active community of users it will survive. Very 
few
languages die out completely. There are still plenty users of COBOL,
Fortran, Lisp, Smalltalk, ADA, Pascal, etc. Python has been around
for almost 20 years, if it survived that long I don't see it 
disappearing
any time soon.

> 4) Should I start it to earn my bread and butter?
> I mean is that beneficial for income.

There are plenty people earning a living using Python.
There are probably even more who use Python as a second language
for building tools, prototyping,  etc.
Any professional programmer should know several languages,
not all of which are likely to be his main source of income but all 
will
be useful tools. In my experience its very unusual to find any 
significant
project that only uses one language (especially if we include shell
scripting, SQL, etc)

More to the point is the matter of what do YOU want to do?
What kind of projects do you want to work on? What kind of
company do you want to work for? The programming language
should not be your primary concern. But if I was starting out as
a programer today I'd want to know at least the basics of:

1) Java
2) C (plus a little bit of C++)
3) SQL
4) bash
5) VB.NET/VBA
6) Javascript
7) One of the scripting languages (Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Tcl)

And more than the basics of at least two of them.

And for a rounded out education I'd consider reading up on:

1) Lisp/Scheme
2) Prolog
3) Haskell
4) Smalltalk

With that under my belt I'd feel reasonably competent.
Other languages you can pick up as you need them.

HTH,

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/