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Is Python worth learning?

lynx a at b.c
Mon Sep 4 21:13:36 EDT 2000 
claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird), in
<42A5B3F57466C779.ED61A6D56B570EE8.67FF247C5B2AE286 at lp.airnews.net>:
> In article <F%Os5.132122$QD5.1566888 at news.corecomm.net>, lynx  <a at b.c>
> wrote:

>>python wasn't designed to do the sort of things java was designed to do,
>>and vice versa. they have some overlap, but they aren't direct
>>competitors.

[...]
> I quibble over the point, because I don't want a newcomer wander- ing
> by, noticing what you've written, and reporting back to the rest of his
> tribe, "The experts say Python can't compete with Java.  It doesn't do
> the things Java does."

well, for several of the more important things java does, python *doesn't*.
and vice versa. as you pointed out, there will surely be times when both
languages _could_ be used to do a thing, even times where it won't make
very much difference which one you choose, but i for one would wager that
in most of those cases, there will also be one or more other languages you
could just as well do the job with. fact of life in a Turing-equivalent
world, i guess.

however, the point i tried to make was that python isn't meant to directly
compete with java in all those places java was meant to be The Language(tm),
that python wasn't built to replace java. not to speak for Guido, of course,
but i'd be rather surprised to learn that it was.
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