I used to give Python programmers a hard time and now I'm a big fan of the language. I've been doing most of my side project in Python now. I really like Groovy though for the JVM work, but JVMs are resource hogs if you just need something simple. If you're going to be doing "serious" computing and need more speed then I highly recommend looking at Go (golang.org). I've really fallen in love with the clear coding I've been getting from Python and it's very quick to develop in (much like Groovy). Go take a bit more work and usually requires refactoring code I've just written to be more concise where I seem to get Python right the first time. And I really don't worry all that much about scale as much of the stuff I do, that can be solved by adding a box and load balancing. The development speed beats out performance worries for most of the stuff. I'm thinking I might try and look for a Python gig for my next job.