Re:Python has brought computer programming to a vast new aud...
by jimbokun on Friday July 20, 2018 @10:18AM
(#17575155)
Success and popularity of a programming language is mostly determined by the platforms it supports and the libraries it has available.
Objective C and now Swift is popular because you need to use one of them (without going to great lengths to avoid it) to write iOS apps. Javascript is popular because you need it to write web apps.
C and C++ are popular because they run almost everywhere, and are the implementation languages of many operating systems and software platforms.
You need Java to develop Android, and it has an incredible amount of libraries for server side web application development.
In a similar vein, TensorFlow and Numpy/Scipy makes Python the de facto language for machine learning, "data science" and scientific programming. It also has an amazing amount of libraries for web application development, text processing, and many other common programming tasks.
Libraries and community/popularity create a positive feedback loop. Large communities create more high quality libraries, which draw in more developers, which create more libraries, etc.
All of this is to say, I don't think much of your observations about Python's design and technical qualities and evolution have much bearing on Python's success one way or another, or for any other programming language. By design or accident, Guido managed to create a community that wrote a lot of useful libraries for many different kinds of tasks, that led to the positive feedback loop leading to Python's current popularity. "Forcing" is not an appropriate term for describing this phenomenon, I think, more accurate to say they have attracted a large community by making Python useful for many different tasks.
Objective C and now Swift is popular because you need to use one of them (without going to great lengths to avoid it) to write iOS apps. Javascript is popular because you need it to write web apps.
C and C++ are popular because they run almost everywhere, and are the implementation languages of many operating systems and software platforms.
You need Java to develop Android, and it has an incredible amount of libraries for server side web application development.
In a similar vein, TensorFlow and Numpy/Scipy makes Python the de facto language for machine learning, "data science" and scientific programming. It also has an amazing amount of libraries for web application development, text processing, and many other common programming tasks.
Libraries and community/popularity create a positive feedback loop. Large communities create more high quality libraries, which draw in more developers, which create more libraries, etc.
All of this is to say, I don't think much of your observations about Python's design and technical qualities and evolution have much bearing on Python's success one way or another, or for any other programming language. By design or accident, Guido managed to create a community that wrote a lot of useful libraries for many different kinds of tasks, that led to the positive feedback loop leading to Python's current popularity. "Forcing" is not an appropriate term for describing this phenomenon, I think, more accurate to say they have attracted a large community by making Python useful for many different tasks.