less cynically ... perhaps the poster wanted the personal opinions of HN hackers, many of whom probably have first-hand experience with Python and might be able to give more personalized answers than what's on FAQ pages

ahhh, k.

so if that's the case, here's what I should do. i'll begin preparing a series of questions to post to HN in the coming weeks, to keep in the same spirit. Rough list to start with:

1. where do babies come from?

2. what is PageRank?

3. what sorts of languages can you write iPhone apps in such that they are allowed in the Apple store?

4. why might I want to write an app in C versus in BASIC?

i'll add more as the whim comes to me. ;)

Actually, if you went one step beyond and asked for opinions or non-obvious answers to any of those, I'd consider that perfectly suitable for the site.

For example

2. is there an open source implementation of PageRank?

3. any tips on how to fake handwritten Objective C so Apple will accept my app?

4. I wrote my app in BASIC instead of Objective C and Steve Jobs said it was okay

here are some more common patterns that HN seems to find acceptable:

1. <something-something-something> Google?

2. <something> Facebook <something> Apple?

3. when will <Apple|Google|Facebook|Amazon> do <my personal whim here>?

:P

here's one more to add to your list: if you do an automated text meta-analysis of "Ask HN" titles and see what words/phrases are correlated with more upvotes, then post your analysis on a blog post, i'm sure people would upvote you like crazy ;)