2010: Year of Python?

I definitely think I suffer from Herpetophobia. Just seeing anything which crawls scares me to death. So, when I was given this book on Python in late 2007, I refused to even read the book; the cover had a huge picture of Python. The book I am talking about was "Programming Python". At that time, I was the Team Leader for the Book Review team at Javalobby. I donated that book to one of my colleagues. Not sure if they reviewed the book or not.

I am still scared of reptiles. However, last week I was asked at work if I would be interested in working on a project which uses Python. I agreed, since I am up for all challenges. I was a bit scared when my colleague said he has a book of Python and went to bring the same. This book however doesn't have the reptile anywhere on its cover.

Having programmed in Java and .NET for many many years now, yep don't even remember how long I have been using these languages, it definitely is a welcome change to learn a completely different language. I have enjoyed working in Java and .NET all these years. I have spent almost 3 days now, working the samples and going over each and every topic and am amazed at this language.I think it was indeed a good decision on my part to have agreed to work on this new project.

A couple of days more, and I am sure I will be preaching everyone to use Python. So, have you used Python? What are your thoughts? What are things you like and dislike about this language? Share your thoughts.