Ask HN: Why did Python win?

Ask HN: Why did Python win?
342 by MatthiasPortzel | 597 comments
I started programming in ~2013 in JavaScript. I’ve since learned and tried a handful of languages, including Python, but JavaScript was always my favorite. Just within the last year I learned Ruby, and I was blown away by how fun and easy to use it is. At the present time, I’m starting all my new projects in Ruby. My impression is that in the ‘00s, Python and Ruby were both relatively new, dynamically typed, “English-like” languages. And for a while these languages had similar popularity. Now Ruby is still very much alive; there are plenty of Rails jobs available and exciting things happening with Ruby itself. But Python has become a titan in the last ten years. It has continued to grow exponentially and Ruby has not. I can guess as to why (Python’s math libraries, numpy and pandas make it appealing to academics; Python is simpler and possibly easier to learn; Rails was so popular that it was synonymous with Ruby) but I wasn’t paying attention at that time. So I’m interested in hearing from some of the older programmers about why Ruby has stalled out and Python has become possibly the most popular programming language (when, in my opinion, Ruby is the better language).