One well-honed item in every sys admin’s toolbox is a preferred scripting language — maybe sh, or ksh, or Perl, or something more unusual, like Rexx or Ruby. I find Python so capable and easy to learn that in my consulting role at Phaseit, I tell newcomers it’s the best single language they can learn. Python spans a wider range of applications than any other language I know — even more than C or Java — and beginners pick it up quickly.
Python vs. Perl
Perl folk seem not to like Python, at least not at first glance. It’s easy to understand why: the languages serve similar purposes, but have annoyingly different syntax and structure. There have been converts, though, and Eric S. Raymond’s experiences are probably not atypical.