What the OP probably means is that it is hard to beat Python on its knockout combo of pragmatism, readability, stdlib, and third-party support.

Does that mean its the best at everything? Of course not. It is second best at most of the important things however, a more unique position than it sounds.

That being the case, then Java and .NET come to mind.

Those are great when you need big or fast, but py is much better at the smaller, easier to write end.

Ah, so Python is for small and slow, doesn't seem to be the best in everything after all.

Which brings us back to "nice scripting and introduction to programming language".

Yup.

Clearly no one is going to be able to convince you otherwise, so is there much point in you continuing to read this thread?

Indeed.

When the overwhelming majority of computer users will probably struggle with something a bit more complex than a Hello World type project, nice scripting and introduction to programming is light-years ahead of every body else.

This is no small feat.

Also the ecosystem of libraries is the same.

You can't see that from your ivory tower but those things matter a lot to people on the ground.

Don't let you prejudice get in the way, it never helps :)

Basic did it first, including the structured programming variants like QBasic and Turbo Basic.

I see that from my historical experience.

Also we are moving goal posts here, I was quite explicit that Python is a good language for teaching programming.

What I am against is portraying as the one Language above anything else.