I appreciate your point, but I also remember hearing that exact argument being used against Python in 2001. A Perl developer was explaining how Python was a ni

I appreciate your point, but I also remember hearing that exact argument being used against Python in 2001. A Perl developer was explaining how Python was a nice language, but would never be able to make in-roads into business. It was too hard to find a Python developer and most programmers don't to want to learn a new language. Furthermore, CPAN provided such a wealth of packages that Python developers would have to implement for themselves. He did concede that Python code did tend to have fewer bugs, but the previous mentioned advantages, alongside the fact that it was much easier to write Perl than Python, meant that Python would never make business sense and Perl would settle into being the Lingua France of the development community. The guy's site even required a Netscape plugin that allowed him to script pages in Perl instead of JavaScript, which he stated was merely a stopgap until Netscape officially added a Perl interpreter into the browser. This was about five years after industry representatives argued that my school should stop teaching C or C++ and focus on the more modern Visual Basic. They explained that, by the year 2005, there would be more COBOL jobs than C jobs. Meanwhile, a semester of Visual Basic experience would guarantee the students a lifetime of employment without learning a new language. I'm under no delusions that Haskell will be the next Python or that Python itself will go the way of VB, but it always makes me take these "industry" arguments with a grain of salt.