Oh yeah, Python is great - my favorite language. Right now I'm programming in Java/JSP, but also have worked extensively with VB.NET, C#, C, VB6, and older languages, and Python is my all-time favorite.
It suffers from the lack of a good
IDE and GUI builder. There's a way you can hack Python support into Visual Studio, but when I tried it, it had some limitations - incompatibility with some third party libraries I was using, so I was booted back to using IDLE.
If it wasn't for that, I believe it would have more market share by now. But for a gentle introduction to programming languages, it would be fabulous!
--Cindy