In a recent article on InternetNews, Sean Michael Kerner suggested that Python has not been ready for the enterprise. But, he says, some think it is ready now. This seems to ask the question: How ready does a technology need to be in order to be ready for the 'enterprise'?

But this is a red herring. After all, the same technological virtues needed for the enterprise are needed by most any significant endeavour - stability, security, scalability, efficiency, to name a few. And almost all of these have been part of Python for years. What really seems to be at the heart of Kerner's article is: How many enterprises need to adopt Python in mission-critical ways before the inertia in your own organisation is nullified?

Just to recap, here are a few of the organisations that use Python for operations critical to their success:

• United Nations
• Google
• NASA
• Industrial Light and Magic
• New York Stock Exchange
• dSpace
• Audi
• Bentley Motors
• Rackspace
• Honeywell
• Philips
• University of Saint Andrews (Scotland)
• PIRC
• d.sruptive
• Linguamatics
• VMWare
• Purdue University
• Barclays Capital
• Merrill Lynch
• University of Connecticut
• Cisco

And these are just a few. You can find more success stories on the PSF website. But what David Goodger says remains true: "Any competent programmer can easily learn Python and be productive within a few hours or days at most." If you don't know Python yet, start today with the "Hello, World!" tutorial.