I've used Python. It's incredibly easy, open source, and you can use it for commercial programs. I'd suggest you try it

Also, I don't know of any games that use ruby, not big titles with large modder communities, which just underscores the "python has a bigger community" in relation to what groups of modders with what games are familiar with what. A lot of Civilization modders with experience in scripting Python can come right over to Elemental when it ships and start playing with that. (And a lot of them will, since Civ V is ditching Python for Lua)

Personally I'd have preferred some C-like derivative, but you can't win them all.

Also don't forget, even though Stardock is writing a lot of the game in Python, you'll still be able to edit and Mod a LOT of it with XML. Of course there will be some things that will have to be changed in Python for a serious Mod, e.i. something like a total conversion, but for the average user who's never been a student or never tried a Mod, XML is really, really easy.

When the Modding section of the forums open I'm sure plenty of us (I know the Devs will, and I'll need to show examples when I start the DL Mod) will be posting examples of code on the forums and explaining what needs to be changed and asking questions on how to do it.

At that point all the normal, non modder people, will need is Notepad or maybe a free trial of a program like Hex Workshop and they'll be able to make their own edits to the game. Most likely you'll even find step-by-step instructions on how to do just that right here on the forums.

It also depends on how easy it is to integrate the scripting runtime into the game, and how easy it is to secure (ie: disabling it's ability to make system calls, because you really don't want a mod able to read the entire hard drive and send the results to the FBI!).

I think LUA is actually better for this type of thing then Python is, but Python is pretty good for it too.

It's somewhat deceptive to think of Python as an "easy" language for non-programmers. Its syntax is fairly simple, and the one-way-to-do-it principle is a massive improvement over the likes of Perl and Ruby.

But it's a very powerful language; it's *the* language of choice among many professional programmers, myself included, when starting up just about any kind of project that doesn't absolutely require C/C++ (eg, kernel drivers). It's a great fit for everything from simple scripts, to custom servers (with Twisted) to GUI apps (wxPython) to 2D games (PyGame) to serious computation (NumPy and SciPy). Yes, Django is fantastic too. When you identify bottlenecks, it's quite easy to write a native module with the Python C API, or with Boost.Python in C++.

Yeah, Python's major weakness for game scripting vs. Lua is that it's *too* powerful; it's not (easily) sandboxable, so you really should trust whatever source you're installing mods from.

Dive Into Python was how I learned:
http://diveintopython.org/

There are other resources for total newbies with zero programming or CS experience that teach Python, but I couldn't tell you which ones are any good.