Today, sure. But you could have made the same argument with Pascal being more practical in the 1980s. And yet here we are 40 years later with Pascal having become obscure and Fortran still with us. While ultimately any programming learning should be language independent, there's an argument to be made to stick to languages like Fortran which have a track record of being around a long time over whatever is currently popular.

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CJefferson 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Fortran is with us in a technical sense, but its use is tiny. I’ve done about six Fortran to python rewrite projects during my academic career. No-one has seriously suggested going the other way.

I will bet you any amount of money you like Python will be more popular than Fortran in 5,10,20 and 30 years.

	▲	spragl an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You are defintely not risk averse. Try to look back 30 years and see how much popularity has changed since then.