Python is simple, easy to read, and has been around and active since 1991. Because of that, it also benefits from being a very stable, fast platform (for an int

Python is simple, easy to read, and has been around and active since 1991. Because of that, it also benefits from being a very stable, fast platform (for an interpreted language), and has a huge standard library (http://docs.python.org/modindex.html http://docs.python.org/modindex.html). If it's not in the standard library, you can probably find it somewhere. A "killer app" is a paradigm that computer people have been using since visicalc, but I'm not sure it applies to every situation.