I was all set for the next programming language I learned to be Ruby. Then I read some disparagement of the language and had a few quick tasks to take care of, so I turned back to Python, the language that’s always the bridesmaid and never the bride as far as I’m concerned. I’ve intended to learn Python for years, but those intentions have never amounted to much. I’ve bought a Python book (or maybe I got it for free), installed it on 5 different computers, and started reading Dive Into Python 10 times. Anyway, things seem to be clicking this time. I wrote the monitoring script that I mentioned earlier in Python last night, and today I used it to generate a report. I’m very much impressed by it.

Even though I’m a pretty committed Java developer these days, I can’t resist the siren’s call of all of the dynamic language obsessed developers out there who say that Java is too strict to provide optimum productivity. So I do plan on giving Python a fair shot and turning to Ruby soon so that I can make a real comparison. There are many things I like about the structure of Java, but I’m always interested in figuring out how to accomplish things faster. One thing is for sure, Python beats the crap out of PHP.