Similarly, I had a few days and decided to go out of my comfort zone. A few days later I had written a blog script and had modified it to work with Google App Engine.

Do you use Python/Django in a professional setting now? If so, how did you find the full-time conversion?

Nit-pick: suspect you are actually a fan of statically-typed languages. Python is a strongly-typed language, but not statically-typed.

(general easy way to tell them apart: in a statically-typed language, both the name and the value bound to it have a type, and those types must match; in a dynamically-typed language only the value has a type; in a weakly-typed language, operations on incompatible types are permitted, and they may be coerced for compatibility; in a strongly-typed language, operations on incompatible types are an error -- usually at compile-time or equivalent for statically-typed, usually run-time for dynamically-typed)

And probably closer to "statically-but-not-too-statically-typed-because-really-more-than-my-language-of-choice-is-too-much" languages. Self-avowed fans of "statically-typed languages" (usually java or C#) rarely consider giving up nulls and casts.

Java:

System.out.println("abc" + 5); -> "abc5"

Python:

print "abc" + 5 -> TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'int' objects

Ruby:

puts "abc" + 5 -> TypeError: can't convert Fixnum into String

Why do you find implicitly converting an int (/Fixnum) to a float (/Float) more palatable, when they have completely different internal representations, domains of definition, precisions, operational semantics and potential pitfalls?

And what about Python's `"foo" * 3`? Hell, what about this:

    > class Fixnum
    >   def to_str
    >     self.to_s
    >   end
    > end
    => nil
    > "5" + 3
    => "53"

But wait, there's more without even bothering with overrides:

    > a = [1, 2, 3]
    => [1, 2, 3]
    > a[1.4]
    => 2

I definitely use Python professionally (and some Django, but that's not the critical stuff.) It's not the only thing I do, but it's another arrow in my quiver. It's really useful for generating applications that need to do a lot of stuff, but benefit from brevity in code. Django is actually more responsible for me learning Python and how to use it responsibly in a production environment. I knew how to write services in C# and Java that wouldn't be an administrative nightmare or cause pagers to go off at odd hours, so I needed to learn that with Python (turns out, it's not hard.)

As always, your mileage may vary. Nonetheless, lean toward finding a use for it in your operation, if only for experience. It's super practical, and to minimize transitional familiarity, go with IronPython. Works with all the VS IDEs.

My biggest worry was if I was offered a job at a great company, how I would be able to adapt not to the language, but going from an entirely different platform, one that I hadn't used in anger since uni. Learning a language shouldn't be a problem, but as I've found out, most of my issues aren't in using the language itself, but adjusting to the Unix workflow.

Also, my big worry is being the "Windows guy" at an office. I doubt I'm the first C# developer to be laughed at because I develop on Windows, even if it's by (in my opinion) fairly crappy developers. Deep down, I reckon a lot of devs look down on people that have the audacity to call themselves developers when they don't build on Linux.

So, I guess my next two questions are:

1. Did you notice a decrease in "professional level" when you moved from C# to Python. I'm a mid-weight developer, probably not too far off from being a senior developer. With very limited Python experience I doubt I'd be able to just jump over to being a mid-level developer, and to be honest I wouldn't want to drop in salary by too much just so I can use a different language.

2. How easy was it to land a job writing Python if you've not come with "previous professional experience"? I've written a bit of Python, simply to script some things on a Windows server. I've got my own scripts, but nothing in an actual job. I reckon I could pick it up (Python/Django), along with a good dev workflow in Linux, within a few months, but I can see employers being skeptical to hire a C# dev if another Python dev wants the job.

To your questions:

1) Professional level decrease? Not hardly. If anything, I found strong professionalism in Python. "Pythonistas" are huge in principles such as DRY, which isn't about something terribly complex but rather keeping things simple and clean. It's about being organizationally effective and not coding one's self into a corner. The fact that the language seems so easy to work with shouldn't give the impression of it being simplistic.

2) I didn't land a job writing Python, it's just a tool to get things done. From a career standpoint, I don't want to be known as a {language/platform/thing} guy, I simply want to be known as an engineer. Tools, languages, platforms, services, etc. will come and go. As long as I recognize how to use those in combination to get things done efficiently, I'm doing my job.

Django admin site is still my favourite feature.