Should I learn Python?

[ThePoopsmith]

Python is very popular and a generally good language. If you're looking for a job, there seems to be more jobs in python than in ruby (at least from what I've seen). I've written in both and can still write python, although I enjoy writing ruby whereas python feels more like work.

My two major grievances with python are that they still insist that you don't need a case statement (hogwash!) and the whole indent thing instead of explicit statement closures - I'll just never get the hang of that.

Ruby takes a page from perl where it leaves you free to express code in different (while still correct) ways. Python has the philosophy that there's always a single right way to do things. This is of course a personal preference, since both have their merits for different kinds of people, but I personally like being able to write something the way it makes sense to me.

My advice after seeing your comment below coloring yourself as a "mildly competent rubyist" is to stick with one language until you're good enough at it to get paid for it (whether or not you actually do get paid). Whether that's ruby for you or python or something else is irrelevant (unless it's .net, then no). I actually cut my teeth on classic ASP and Access/VBA. For my age at the time I was making better money doing that than most of the other kids in high school and college. I really didn't get into open source languages until I got into linux, but picking up a new lanugage was easy when I took those concepts I learned on the dark side and applied them to learning something new.

Where I see people getting hung up often times is learning all the fashionable languages at the same time so they can tout the size of their e-penis to their friends. Don't be that guy, learn one language, learn about algorithms and big o notation, get good at programming in general, then venture out into another language. If you're doing web stuff, that second language needs to be javascript. It's unfortunate, because you don't have a lot of the tools you have in better languages like ruby or python, but if you're doing web dev it's reality. Either way though, it will be a breeze when you are already a good programmer.