Here's what I would like to create, what language to do it with?
I am a newbie to the world of programming. I'm a systems administrator (Windows and VMware), but I've always wanted to learn to program. I've been doing a lot of reading, and the suggestion seems to be that if you have something specific you want to do then you're more likely to learn things in a meaningful way.

Some of the reading I've done suggests Python as a useful first language to learn, but I thought I'd post here and see if the community can give me some specific feedback, based on what I'd like to do.

So here it is. I play in a fantasy baseball league with custom scoring. I would like to create an application which uses the XML data from MLB's website ([this type of data][1]), in conjunction with a spreadsheet or CSV with our rosters, and a scoring chart, to automatically score the games.

So, is this the type of application that Python would be appropriate to create? Or is there another language which might make more sense? Again, I'm an experienced admin with some basic scripting experience, but no programming experience. I'm open to all suggestions and feedback, thanks.


  [1]: http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2011/month_05/day_14/gid_2011_05_14_tormlb_minmlb_1/boxscore.xml
Here's what I would like to create, what language to do it with?
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I am a newbie to the world of programming. I'm a systems administrator (Windows and VMware), but I've always wanted to learn to program. I've been doing a lot of reading, and the suggestion seems to be that if you have something specific you want to do then you're more likely to learn things in a meaningful way.

Some of the reading I've done suggests Python as a useful first language to learn, but I thought I'd post here and see if the community can give me some specific feedback, based on what I'd like to do.

So here it is. I play in a fantasy baseball league with custom scoring. I would like to create an application which uses the XML data from MLB's website ([this type of data][1]), in conjunction with a spreadsheet or CSV with our rosters, and a scoring chart, to automatically score the games.

So, is this the type of application that Python would be appropriate to create? Or is there another language which might make more sense? Again, I'm an experienced admin with some basic scripting experience, but no programming experience. I'm open to all suggestions and feedback, thanks.


  [1]: http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2011/month_05/day_14/gid_2011_05_14_tormlb_minmlb_1/boxscore.xml