I think that the classification has some meaning, even if of course any language has different shades of both sides. I'd say that with python is difficult to choose one of the two categories because it's good both as a pratical language and as a mind-opener language.
IMO another language that would be hard to classify is COBOL ... but for other reasons :-) Andrea -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
