What I love about python is that technical people use it who don't code and yet they do amazing stuff. Geologists. Astronomers. Mathematicians. Petroleum engineers. It has a wild, wide crazy community that's rare elsewhere.
I have a theory that one reason Python is gaining so much ground lately in scientific computing (over tools such as R) is because
1) it is literally almost impossible to write unreadable code in Python,
2) most scientists are terrible programmers,
and
3) when a project matures, "real" programmers get involved, and the fact that the code is readable (and therefore amenable to maintenance and extension) vastly increases the chances that the project will succeed.
Scientists know how smart they are, and assume that programming is mainly about being smart. But it's not -- it's much more of a learned skill to become a really good programmer. It's something you have to focus on and respect as a goal in and of itself, not just something any smart person can muddle through on logic and intuition.
