I'd argue that better relative ergonomics had diddly squat effect on Python's current position. It's first mover advantage, plain and simple. It got its hooks in data science like JavaScript got its in the browser.
I can say that personally using Ruby, Python felt like a massive step backward. I can see how others might disagree, but I feel like it's all in what you know first. On a certain level, most of us know JavaScript is just terrible, but there have been millions of new devs who knew nothing else and thought it's fine--better than fine, its great, it's the other stuff that's weird! But then you go on for a while, maybe eventually find lisp and/or functional programming, and you realize how brain-damaged our most commonly used tools really are.
I can say that personally using Ruby, Python felt like a massive step backward. I can see how others might disagree, but I feel like it's all in what you know first. On a certain level, most of us know JavaScript is just terrible, but there have been millions of new devs who knew nothing else and thought it's fine--better than fine, its great, it's the other stuff that's weird! But then you go on for a while, maybe eventually find lisp and/or functional programming, and you realize how brain-damaged our most commonly used tools really are.