Just came across this article <http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/07/20/1431259> from the Ottawa Linux Symposium, which mentions (among other things) Martin Bligh's presentation on the automated testing system used for the Linux kernel:
The test system is written in Python, and he discussed at length why Python was chosen as the language for the system. He also spent some time showing the audience test output from the system, and discussed why other languages were not suitable for the test system. He described Python as a language that meets the requirements for the task because it is a language that is easy to modify and maintain, that is not write-only, that has exception handling, is powerful but not necessarily fast, is easy to learn, and has wide libraries of modules to leverage. He described Perl as a write-only language, and said that while people can do amazing things with the shell, it is not appropriate for the purpose. He said with a grin that he has a lot of respect for what people can do in the shell, but none for choosing to do it that way in the first place. One thing he particularly likes about Python, he said, is its usage of indentation. Unlike other languages, Bligh noted, Python is read by the computer the same way as it is read by a person, resulting in fewer bugs. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list