I'd been in the Python community for around 10 years, spoke at several conferences, wrote libraries; contributed to CPython, Openstack, and others. I've been a technical reviewer for a book on distributed computing in Python. A big part of my career was built on this language, its community, and ecosystem. I'd say a big part of Python's slow-and-steady success is its community. Going to Pycon US, Pycon CA, and Pycon's around the world -- the user groups that the foundation funds with Pizza money and mentorship programs: it's a fairly unique experience.
Another major factor is how it serves as a glue language in the scientific community. Python provides a relatively simple programming language that powers complex, powerful libraries like NumPy, SciPy, PyTorch, SymPy, etc. It's like a scripting language for engineering and scientific computing tools, sort of like what Javascript does for browsers, Node, and Deno, etc.
I don't do much Python programming these days but I owe it a huge debt! May it continue to flourish and grow.
The syntax, I think, is also the least likely to scare off newbie programmers. Personally, I came to really dislike the Python syntax, but it reads rather well, is very unintimidating, and easily supports the kinds of things that newbies will be doing.
Not to rag on Python, but I found the indent-sensitivity of Python can make it challenging to do the sort of basic things that C-family languages make fairly simple. Lambdas in Python suck in contrast to how lambdas and anonymous functions work in other languages.
But yeah, Python has proven itself to be a great language for a wide variety of applications. It makes a lot of sense for the scientific community probably because things like heavy object orientation matter a lot less in those cases. The community doesn't discourage people from just writing functions, unlike other communities that are hellbent in making everything a method of some class structure and being explicit about that.
Another major factor is how it serves as a glue language in the scientific community. Python provides a relatively simple programming language that powers complex, powerful libraries like NumPy, SciPy, PyTorch, SymPy, etc. It's like a scripting language for engineering and scientific computing tools, sort of like what Javascript does for browsers, Node, and Deno, etc.
I don't do much Python programming these days but I owe it a huge debt! May it continue to flourish and grow.