Well, fair enough then, I take that back. Nonetheless, I know a few python web programmers, and zero of them use windows. I imagine that libraries would be a big issue too, not to mention the native lack of simple things like a proper command line, ssh, all the normal tools. Sure, you might be able to make it all kind-of work, but it's harder than it should be and decidedly outside of the mainstream.
Couldn't really comment on academic computing. I suppose, though, they are not really relying on the larger ecosystem as much as (say) web applications, so would not be affected so badly by the libraries issue.
Python is also used as a scripting and plugin language in several large commercial Windows applications.
I concur. I've found Windows support in the Python community to be pretty good. The Ruby community seems to have more of a focus on posix platforms.
Point taken. However, like I said above, I know a few startups who use python, and the only Windows boxes there are for IE testing. Certainly no-one deploys on it. Academic computing seems to be a different world, though.
While I do lots of web work, the majority of my work with Python is as a scripting language embedded in a cross-platform app (Sublime Text). There are easily hundreds of thousands of developers who use that work on a daily basis.
The Windows support in Python is extensive enough I was able to write a web-client using ctypes and the native Windows network API to better support users with funky proxies and so forth.
Nope: Windows support in Python is good and well-maintained, afaik. It boils down to attention for neophytes, really, and applications in education... a field where Python has much more mindshare than Ruby or node (IMHO).