> Looking forward to the "why" post. Glad that they mentioned that they'll be publishing that soon.
I think the "why" is because, for many users:
* they want a small and easy, dynamically-typed, garbage-collected language with few surprises (see `import this`). Perl misses out here.
* they want something built with C so there's easy access to native libraries. Languages on general-purpose VMs miss out here.
* I don't think they want something that transpiles/compiles down to some other lower-level language (which I suspect leads to difficult debugging). Maybe Nim misses out here.
* they're comfortable with imperative-style programming. Maybe lisps and Haskell miss out here.
* Python is fast enough for most things where C-speed isn't needed. Very-high-level languages chasing dreams of high performance mostly miss out here, IMO.
* they want a language that helps them catch their mistakes. IMO, maybe Lua misses out here (with default nil everywhere).
* Users want a general-purpose language. Again, Lua misses here, though, of course, Lua's goal isn't to be general-purpose anyway.
* I think many users also want a language that's licensed GPL-compatible. Clojure misses out here.
* they want a nice helpful community
* Users want a language with familiar C/C++/JS/Java -ish syntax. Python misses out here! {ducks}
Python has its own set of problems, but it hits all those marks except for the last one. So, it's gotten quite popular.
I think the "why" is because, for many users:
* they want a small and easy, dynamically-typed, garbage-collected language with few surprises (see `import this`). Perl misses out here.
* they want something built with C so there's easy access to native libraries. Languages on general-purpose VMs miss out here.
* I don't think they want something that transpiles/compiles down to some other lower-level language (which I suspect leads to difficult debugging). Maybe Nim misses out here.
* they're comfortable with imperative-style programming. Maybe lisps and Haskell miss out here.
* Python is fast enough for most things where C-speed isn't needed. Very-high-level languages chasing dreams of high performance mostly miss out here, IMO.
* they want a language that helps them catch their mistakes. IMO, maybe Lua misses out here (with default nil everywhere).
* Users want a general-purpose language. Again, Lua misses here, though, of course, Lua's goal isn't to be general-purpose anyway.
* I think many users also want a language that's licensed GPL-compatible. Clojure misses out here.
* they want a nice helpful community
* Users want a language with familiar C/C++/JS/Java -ish syntax. Python misses out here! {ducks}
Python has its own set of problems, but it hits all those marks except for the last one. So, it's gotten quite popular.