Re:Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
by habinero on Monday December 22, 2025 @11:28AM
(#46355508)
Python ultimately won because of its community.
The Python leadership group is friendly towards beginners and people with non-traditional backgrounds, and they actively reach out and recruit those folks to participate. It's also one of the least toxic developer communities I know of.
That matters a lot in a field like data science or cybersecurity, which has a lot of people who don't have traditional SWE backgrounds.
The language is pleasant and readable to use and has a lot of features built in, which Perl did not, but I think that's much less critical than the network effect of being a (1) welcoming and pleasant community who (2) actively recruits new fields of people.
The Python leadership group is friendly towards beginners and people with non-traditional backgrounds, and they actively reach out and recruit those folks to participate. It's also one of the least toxic developer communities I know of.
That matters a lot in a field like data science or cybersecurity, which has a lot of people who don't have traditional SWE backgrounds.
The language is pleasant and readable to use and has a lot of features built in, which Perl did not, but I think that's much less critical than the network effect of being a (1) welcoming and pleasant community who (2) actively recruits new fields of people.