I seem to be succeeding in helping to convince my graduate program in bioinformatics to ditch Perl in favor of Python. I'm very happy about this! When you don't have a programming background, and you're going into a field with heavy programming, Perl will hurt you -- it's likely to make you dislike programming. Python OTOH is like the fuzzy kitten of programming languages -- but it still has claws! (By which I mean, you can do serious stuff with it, despite its apparent adorableness.)

Also I've just started juggling again after a longish hiatus. I just decided to try a four-ball pattern the other day, and was absolutely shocked when I kept it going for like four complete cycles. Next mileposts will be: five-ball cascade, and three balls one-handed. I think 3/1 is probably harder than 5/2, but I'm not sure. I did a 3/1 flash the other day after ten tries, but I've never been able to complete a 5/2 flash. OTOH I've only recently begun to regard a 5-ball pattern as even achievable.