I had to choose between PERL, Python, or Ruby. PERL was powerful but try reading others' stuff. Maintenance phase is important. Python was productive, readable, and fast, even for newcomers. Ruby + RAILS particularly were similarly kicking butt. I decided on Python because there's lots of effort pouring into it across the whole field: JIT's/compilers; numerical computing; scripting; web apps; cross-platform sys apps; integration with cutting-edge languages (eg Julia); security tech; cloud runtimes.<p>That plus its good community, long time existence, low defect rate with static analysis tools (i.e. Coverity), and increasing usage in mission-critical applications (eg Bank of America). Seem like an excellent baseline until something better comes along. Plus, if your writing business code, there's a good chance what you write might stick around for a decade or more. I pity the poor soul that would be reverse engineering Java, C#, etc code to support and extend legacy 10 years from now. Python with decent documentation might be way easier on them, though. :)