I appreciate that; I am something of a "languages pioneer" at work, and I have gotten good traction with Python because the learning curve is very shallow. You can use it a a glorified shell script and get something useful done very quickly and as you learn more you can add in the FP goodness, OO, whatever you want, it grows with you. Now looking to take it a bit further, I am shopping around, Haskell and OCaml are candidates, but to sell this on the grounds of, learning this and using it will get your project done quicker than continuing in what you're using now. So I have shot myself in the foot a bit; Python is really productive, and other than the language itself, the biggest factor is the ActiveState "batteries included" distribution.