My revulsion for Python stems from its 1960’s-era column-based syntax, and the fact that it’s just another generic scripting language. A bunch of people rallied around it and now it is the new hotness. This, too, will pass.
Guido van Rossum: Actually, my initial goal for Python was to serve as a second language for people who were C or C++ programmers, but who had work where writing a C program was just not effective.
Hmm, sounds a lot like Perl. I’ll give you that it has a rather … unique … syntactical style.
For embedded systems, it’s hard to beat Tcl (jimtcl being my implementation of choice). For you functional programmers out there, Forth or Lisp would be a good alternative.
As far as hack values go, hey, knock yourself out.
(edit: I’ll add that Tcl has its own issues: Dealing with numeric values and computations are a major pain. But as a “Tool Command Langauge”, it kinda rocks.)