Modern programs must handle Unicode —Python has excellent support for Unicode, and will keep getting better.

There is an incredibly large spectrum of possible causes for program bugs, including simple typos, thinkos, hidden limitations of underlying abstractions, and outright bugs in abstractions or their implementation.

I would guess that the decision to create a small special purpose language or use an existing general purpose language is one of the toughest decisions that anyone facing the need for a new language must make.

Mark Hammond is working in this area, with Windows Scripting Host. It is definitely an area where Python fits almost perfectly. That's quite independent from Java, actually.

I have this hope that there is a better way. Higher-level tools that actually let you see the structure of the software more clearly will be of tremendous value.

If you're talking about Java in particular, Python is about the best fit you can get amongst all the other languages. Yet the funny thing is, from a language point of view, JavaScript has a lot in common with Python, but it is sort of a restricted subset.

It's easy to make mistakes that only come out much later, after you've already implemented a lot of code. You'll realize Oh I should have used a different type of data structure. Start over from scratch.

Python is an experiment in how much freedom programmers need. Too much freedom and nobody can read another's code too little and expressiveness is endangered.

Now, it's my belief that Python is a lot easier than to teach to students programming and teach them C or C++ or Java at the same time because all the details of the languages are so much harder. Other scripting languages really don't work very well there either.