2008-01-28
One reason I like Python
One reason that I like Python is that I find it what I call a very 'computer science' language and I am a product of a CS environment. By this I mean that Python is mostly built from a small number of core concepts which are uniformly expanded through the language, and those core concepts are by and large familiar to me from my CS background.
(It also has a quite traditional Algol-style syntax, apart from the whitespace issue.)
Since its core concepts click for me, I find Python very regular and predictable; as I sometimes put it, Python thinks like I do. Things that I think should work generally do, and it winds up being easy to write most Python code, even code that does moderately odd things. And I found learning Python fairly easy, as once I understood a few core ideas things more or less just fell into place and I could extrapolate outwards.
(I suspect that this is one reason that the Python tutorial seems to work so well for people who like Python. If you have the CS style background and think like Python does, the tutorial is less teaching you things than showing you how Python's bits fit into what you already know. A longer, more verbose tutorial wouldn't just be unnecessary, it would be belabouring the point.)