linked-in code in the interpreter if speed is criticalcompiled extensions are available for number-crunching parts of an application you can use python for nearly anything you can do with computerfrom website development and gaming to robotics and spacecraft control this was mentioned in footnoteimport this triggers an easter egg inside python that displays some of the design philosophies underlying the language you'll learn how to run this statement in the next "spamis reference from famous monty python skit in which people trying to order food in cafeteria are drowned out by chorus of vikings singing about spam ohand it' also common variable name in python scripts blue noyellow(see the prior answer python is engineeringnot art when python first emerged on the software scene in the early sit spawned what is now something of classic conflict between its proponents and those of another popular scripting languageperl personallyi think the debate is tired and unwarranted today--developers are smart enough to draw their own conclusions stillthis is one of the most common topics ' asked about on the training roadand underscores one of the main reasons people choose to use pythonit seems fitting to say few brief words about it here the short story is thisyou can do everything in python that you can in perlbut you can read your code after you do it that' it--their domains largely overlapbut python is more focused on producing readable code for manythe enhanced readability of python translates to better code reusability and maintainabilitymaking python better choice for programs that will not be written once and thrown away perl code is easy to writebut can be difficult to read given that most software has lifespan much longer than its initial creationmany see python as the more effective tool the somewhat longer story reflects the backgrounds of the designers of the two languages python originated with mathematician by trainingwho seems to have naturally produced an orthogonal language with high degree of uniformity and coherence perl was spawned by linguistwho created programming tool closer to natural languagewith its context sensitivities and wide variability as well-known perl motto statesthere' more than one way to do it given this mindsetboth the perl language and its user community have historically encouraged untethered freedom of expression when writing code one person' perl code can be radically different from another' in factwriting uniquetricky code is often source of pride among perl users but as anyone who has done any substantial code maintenance should be able to attestfreedom of expression is great for artbut lousy for engineering in engineeringwe need minimal feature set and predictability in engineeringfreedom of expression can lead to maintenance nightmares as more than one perl user has confided to methe result of too much freedom is often code that is much easier to rewrite from scratch than to modify this is clearly less than ideal python & session