As far as learning scheme,
My $0.02:
From a purely practical standpoint, if, like me, you have limited
time, energy and mental capacity, python would probably yield a better
investment payback. There are numerous extensions available that make
parsing things like pdb files very simple, there is the whole phenix/
cctbx resource you can make use of, and it is probably the most
powerful and commonly employed scripting language among scientists
(bioinformatics people like perl, for its text processing abilities).
The syntax is very clean and straightforward and you don't have to
deal with huge piles of dollar signs and parentheses all over the place.
Whichever you use, be sure to use an editor that employs an
intelligent syntax highlighting mechanism, like vim, or even emacs (if
you type with a lisp). On OS X, TextMate is my editor of choice.
Here's a site that lists some of the available modules:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/NumericAndScientific
HTH,
Bill
