Just a reminder that some languages and implementations never make it to their next big version. Perl 6 never broke. hhvm has not made everyone forget about PHP 5. Sometimes a language peaks when you are still in the mediocre (or horrible) implementation days. Unfortunately it is probably safer to bet against Python 3 and Python in general in the long run. If anyone has misgivings you should switch to a different language entirely.<p>I would suggest the follow in order of interest to you and your pay grade:<p>Haskell: Runtime is great and fast. Great syntax (but alien to most). Many hard problems have been solved with fantastic libraries.<p>JavaScript: V8 and Node.js make a great runtime implementation. Sweet.js will let you fix all the warts of the language.<p>Lua: Fast runtime in either of the major implementations (Lua 5 or LuaJIT). Python is never going to beat it. Python is said to have nice syntax, but if you like to use ternary operators in Python or multi-expression lambdas (impossible) your Python code will be ugly anyway. So, if you care about syntax use Haskell or Sweet.js. If you are using Python you are actually in syntax hell and Lua will be a relief.