Anyone who has known me for long enough knows how much of an absolute failure I am when it comes to trying to learn a programming language and sticking to it. It’s not through lack of wanting to do it, I just easily get distracted by other “awesome” programming languages and try and learn those; a cycle forms.

Anyway, I am trying to stick with some languages now through hell or high water. I have decided to learn Perl and C and stick to them rigorously until I have finished my two books on them; which, incidentally, are very good and highly recommendable (O’Reilly’s Learning Perl and Keringhan and Ritchie’s The C Programming Language).

Anyway, when considering what languages to study, my mind always goes towards other things. The biggest “other thing” was the Python programming language. I have always dabbled with Python and actually deployed it for some maintenance tasks on a few servers. It’s highly readable, maintainable and has a few nice features built into it. It is also the language supported by Ubuntu’s Quickly.

So why did I choose Perl instead of Python. On the more logical sides, I’m not a big fan of the importance of white-space in Python and I find it tends to bugger things up too easily and I think Perl, having CPAN, is a much more mature and proven language. However, on the slightly illogical side, the reason I am not learning Python is to do with the front cover of the books that cover it.

Programming Python is supposed to be an excellent book; you wont see me owning it anytime soon.

First of all, a little background on the origins of the name ‘Python’. Despite people’s interpretation that Python is named of the Pythonidae genus of snake, it is in fact named after Monty Python, heroes of the comedy world (to most people, annoying to others). Hence why the IDE is named IDLE, after Eric Idle.

Ruby! I fart in your general direction!

However, the misinterpretation of the name is what causes me trouble. Most publishers of modern Python books tend to put the snake on the front of the cover and, if you haven’t guessed already, I have a phobia of snakes, especially big ones (here’s hoping somebody doesn’t bring out a language named on the children’s show, ‘Anna Conda’).

And I’m not alone with my fear. Fear of snakes has one of the highest incursion rates of all the phobias; right up there with spiders. So, why do these books still put the dreaded animal on the front? It seems that people would be more welcoming to buy the books if there wasn’t a lump of muscle designed to kill on the front of it. I really wonder how many extra sales they would make by replacing it.

Okay, I know I sound a little harsh towards our legless friend and I really know my fear is irrational. So much so, I have been staring at the same picture of a snake in my spare time for a few days now, trying to desensitise myself to it.

Yep, still scares me shitless.

On a note on the picture above, I was resizing it (cautiously) and wordpress decided it would be a good idea to make it massive AND in my face. Therefore, if you are offended by the image, be safe in the knowledge I have suffered as much as you have.

Anyway, something to ponder and, hopefully, cure myself of. Although, I have to admit, my fear of automatic car washes is slightly weirder…

I'm not even joking.