Python is weird. It's a nice language but it was heading for tech debt status along with (maybe) Ruby, then the ML guys went all-in on it and that saved it. But how often do you find new programs being written in Python outside of the ML/AI space? People got burned repeatedly in the 2000s/2010s by building giant empires on the back of dynamically typed scripting languages and they all ended up either doing rewrites into statically typed languages or (when successful enough) funding PL R&D to try and dig themselves out of it.
I use it - and I suspect a lot of other people also - as a replacement for Matlab. I am an electrical engineer and I write short scripts to calculate stuff and hook it up to simulations etc. Matlab has great toolboxes, but is pretty expensive and the language is a bit clunky. Python is just very versatile and has a huge eco-system now that would be hard to replace. A lot of system administratiors also use it for scripting.
Which is weird because Perl didn't really go anywhere, and only got better over time. I mean, at this point it's a large dose of network effect, but I'd love to learn how this transition happened in the early days of it.
Edit: I just tried to look it up and as far back as I can find data (which is early 2000s something), it seems that Python has always been more popular than Perl. TIL!
But how often do you find new programs being written in Python outside of the ML/AI space?
Python is pretty huge in most numerical spaces outside of ML/AI, basically anywhere people would have used MATLAB in the past. It is also the go to language in GIS and quite popular in civil engineering.
