I am looking for some thoughts/opinions on the merits of these two languages. Over the years I book a few books on Java including Java in Nutshell Java Foundation Class Java for Scientist and Engineers The latter being the most useful to me. However, I've never really got the hang of how it all works. I don't have a formal programming background In recent times, I've come across Python and lately stumbled upon SciPy,ipython, NumPy and matplotlib.sourceforge.net. I've also noticed that Python has PyQt that enables you to use the Qt and poss KDE for widgets and gui interface. KDE is the desktop of choice for me and QT Designer are all "sudo apt-get install " away. Both Python and Java are cross platform which a plus. What I would like to do is put together small applications often using complex numbers and array for the engineering work that I do. Sometimes importing csv text files containing data from measurment devices. I have always thought Java was the tool for this but lately, I've noticed how easy it is to make things work with Python. especially the interactive "try a line of code, did it do what you wanted?, no, try this, ah, that works" I'm thinking that Python might provide the fast feed back approach that gets you enthused about actually coding than the steper learning curve of a more comprehensive language and not actually knowing where to start with a gui or even just how to get the IDE to use the classpath you want. I'd be interested if people had thoughts or comments on the merits. Cheers