Python is an interpreted language, that
competes for the same niche as Perl and has similar capabilities.
However, it has a completely different philosophy with different syntax and
conventions.
It has a "There's one way to do it" Philosophy which enables people to
understand and modify each other's code. (contrast to Perl's "There's more than
one way to do it.")
Uses whitespace for indentation, which makes embedding it inside text
templates more difficult.
Somewhat slower than Perl in most cases, but still quite fast enough
for most needs.