On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, r j wrote: > A question on languages. > What are your favor languages and what are your favorite ways to use them. > I am a python beginner and i am working through the standard library and > writing simple scripts using pattern matching. and the sys library to make a > cross platform easy administration tool. Maybe a web interface later on. > I also use Bash. It always depends on what your goals are. For aspiring scientists, especially those who need to do statistical and/or probabilistic work, I recommend learning GNU R. It also makes nice graphs. It is the king of the stat packages now and that will continue. Once they've learned some R, if they want more flexibility for more general kinds of programming, I would recommend Python. I'm not using it myself, but it seems to be the way to go today. I've talked with a lot of people about it and that's where I stand. Of course, if you want to be a really serious programmer you'll want to learn C and/or C++. For general everyday system hackery stuff, you should work on the Bash skills. I do a lot with Bash scripts. Mike