Chris,
Scenario: You're introducing someone to Python for the first time. S/he may have some previous programming experience, or may be new to the whole idea of giving a computer instructions. You have a couple of minutes to show off how awesome Python is. What do you do?
Some ideas where given by others already. I especially liked the variable swap one liner by Emile van Sebille. That's a little simple gem that will impress any seasoned developer of other programming languages.
But speaking about impressing more experient programmers, I personally don't think Python has a wow factor in any of its features and syntax. At least in the way I understand the word "wow". Python shares its own brand of idiosyncracies with any other programming languages. Little gotchas and caveats that have you scratch your head and sometimes annoy you slightly. Python is it too cropped here and there with things worth criticizing.
Meanwhile some of its interesting language features, like Comprehensions and Generators, aren't really that impressive to a seasoned developer of functional programming languages or programming languages like C# with its highly powerful and expressive LINQ.
This means that, alone, Python won't really standout. But this is ok. No language does it on the merits of its syntax or feature set.
What does make Python standout in my opinion -- what gave me the wow -- is its interoperability. Here we have a general purpose scripting language with more hooks to other systems that any other programming language in existence. With just Python, I can build a modern GUI interface on any of the most popular operating systems, use it on PostgreSQL to build stored procedures and move most of my business rules to the database server and attach dynamic behavior to a system developed in some other programming language.
---- I apologize if my post was to long, but I lacked the time to make it shorter. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
