llancet makes a good point but curiously, I think you do, too.

I actually began my study of Perl using O'Reilly's bioinformatics book...before turning to the O'Reilly's "Learning Perl". Even though I turned to "Learning Perl" as my preferred "tutor", working my way throught the bioinformatics book was both instructive adn acutally built a passion in me for Perl that I might not have found othewise. It appealed to the "scientist" in me in a way that I can't describe...not that I'm a "scientist".

On the other hand, thinking to your comment, LanX, I have to say that I see a very, very strong tendancy (at least at the National Labs) to gravitate to Python. I have talked to a few of their scientists and they tend to agree with you...somehow Python resonates with them more than Perl (though only one or two can claim any real familiarity with Perl...so maybe that points to some bias of unfamiliarity rather than anything really to do with the languages).

One thing that stikes me as curious is that there seems to be an opinion amongst those that I've talked to, to reinforce what I've seen in "Programming the Semantic Web" and "Programming Collective Intelligence"...an assertion that Python is "more easy to read...is more 'understandable' that other languages like Perl. I find that curious...maybe because I'm biased towards Perl...as I find Python to be fairly obtuse and anything but "more 'understandable'". But that's just my opinion.

Thanks for your feedback...and for the feedback from the other responders to your thread.