[iainduncan]

For me, Python is the only language that addresses the human side of programming well. You just plain make fewer mistakes with Python, and it's way easier to reload code into your brain after not looking at it for a while. The readability and obvious syntax has vastly more far reaching effects than one thinks it will when first learning it. It's amazing how much more productive one is in a language that is easy to read, easy to type, and easy to figure out what the most likely way to do something is. I reach for pdb more than a manual because most of the time I can guess what an api will be, and if not, 5 seconds of introspection reveals it. Ruby is well designed for computers, but Python is better designed for us fallible humans who have to type into computers. ;-)

[iainduncan]

Further to this, as fallible humans, we usually get the design wrong on the first try. The truly multi-paradigm nature of python has for me made it a really great language for refactoring and iteratively arriving on a good design. You can write proto-types really fast, and turn them into more formal architectures very smoothly.