I think Python was popular as a general-purpose language first. After all, there was a reason people put so much effort into writing Numpy in the first place.
I think a lot of people were attracted to the language design, as captured in the Zen of Python (https://peps.python.org/pep-0020/), such as:
Explicit is better than implicit.
Readability counts.
Errors should never pass silently (unless explicitly silenced)
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
In many cases, Ruby has almost the opposite philosophy. There's nothing wrong with that - but I think a lot of people prefer Python's choices.
I think a lot of people were attracted to the language design, as captured in the Zen of Python (https://peps.python.org/pep-0020/), such as:
Explicit is better than implicit.
Readability counts.
Errors should never pass silently (unless explicitly silenced)
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
In many cases, Ruby has almost the opposite philosophy. There's nothing wrong with that - but I think a lot of people prefer Python's choices.