Heck, I'm looking at this survey and wondering if I should put Python on my learning queue. It does seem to be in use across a lot of disciplines, including some of the most popular emerging techs.
and honestly. You'll be 60% competent within a week or two. There's a long tail of language features and idioms, but that basics get you so far in python.
I'd contrast this with say Java, my other mainstay and Scala which I'm picking up in pieces right now. Java is quite explicit and has quite a bit less built-in so you don't feel very capable or productive for quite a bit longer. Scala has so many syntactic variants and features that the volume of stuff I have to learn is relatively vast. Every third block of code I read uses a new unheard of language feature or concept. ... and I have some functional programming background.
kjeetgill|6 years ago
I'd contrast this with say Java, my other mainstay and Scala which I'm picking up in pieces right now. Java is quite explicit and has quite a bit less built-in so you don't feel very capable or productive for quite a bit longer. Scala has so many syntactic variants and features that the volume of stuff I have to learn is relatively vast. Every third block of code I read uses a new unheard of language feature or concept. ... and I have some functional programming background.