I have a little experience, but there are members who frequent this forum that know much more than myself. I've only had my Sumatran short-tail since December, but I really enjoy keeping him and he's just about the perfect snake for me.

You certainly need to be familiar with cues like their breathing, how tense they are, and all that when going to mess with them, though. It becomes automatic soon enough, and your bp can teach you the basics. They're very low maintenance because they don't defecate often, and they're actually less demanding temperature-wise so long as you keep things steady. They're unforgiving of beginner errors (they'll easily get sick in sub par conditions, and they are NOT easy to cure), but if you can keep things stable in the appropriate range they're pretty easy. Handling is different from most snakes since they don't actually try to wrap around you for balance; you essentially need to cradle them and support their body yourself. There are some excellent handling videos on youtube to help you out with this. There's plenty of information to be found in this section about them, and there's more on bloodpythons.com.