I think your short answer deserved a ++ in itself.

I have considered learning Python and Ruby for a while and intend to do it as soon as my projects let me relax a little (which may as well mean never). Learning something is generally good and Python has its merits. Once you know it, you might either decide that it's better than Perl at some tasks, or borrow idioms and techniques into your Perl programming practices. You might also decide it's not worth much effort and offer people detailed reasons why.

I recently started programming in Java and even if some tasks are made infinitely tedious, the way the language is designed gave me a better insight on software design and programming techniques. Now my OO-design is a bit more careful and my Perl code a bit cleaner. And even if Perl remains my favourite language, for any new project I consider using Java and sometimes decide it's a better choice for the task at hand. Furthermore, during a talk I gave recently I could use it as a benchmark to show Perl's effectiveness at string and template handling ;-).

I've chewed through a Ruby book myself recently. I find it's a really nice lil language. I wouldn't mind at all if circumstances forced me to work in it. As it is though, seeing how its blackbox approach to "clean" OO frees one from the headaches Perl OO can induce only made me desire Perl 6 more. :) I plan on doing a bit of actual coding in Ruby just to get a better feel for the language as I do already like the looks of it, but chances are it won't manage to pry me away from Perl by a long shot, and if only because its community and code archive are so small for the time being, although none of this relates to my tendency to write long run-on sentences. %-)

Makeshifts last the longest.

By a quirk of timing, this was revealed to me at the same time I posted my reply that appeared immediately above it. It took me a moment's careful looking to confirm that it wasn't aimed at me...however, the shoe fits :)

Right now, my new employer (big sigh of relief over leaving the coprs of the unemployed) wants me to come up to speed on the tools they use, and Python isn't one of them, but Perl is. I've already caused the head tech in my group to suggest that we need to use Perl a lot more (vice Korn shell, mostly).

I keep telling myself that it might be useful to take a real look at Python (or Java), but somehow it never makes it high enough on my priority list.

I call it laziness...you might call it sloth. I might even not disagree.

yours,
Michael

Hear, hear. I took the time to learn enough Python to be dangerous (I've actually used its xmlrpclib to implement a few useful things at work) and I can cite specific warts that put me off the language as a whole (other than the whitespace thing).