Why Python

• Python is a very high level, object oriented, dynamically typed programming language with features for programming in the large and very large
• Python has an interactive command loop (REPL) and excellent introspective and reflective capabilities
• Python integrates well with C (embedded or extended) and Java (Jython) and (soon) .NET
• Python has tons of libraries, standard and otherwise
• Python uses significant whitespace to indicate block structure. This results in the charge of being "executable psuedocode"
• Python is fairly popular for Semantic Web work, and AI (see too Norvig's Python for Lisp Users and Python Infrequently Answered Questions (a bit out of date on some points))