why-python-won

I'll add my 2 cents. Why not?

I think folks saying that features or libraries or FFI or whatnot are the issue are missing the point. Why doesn't Perl have those features or libraries or great FFI? Why _does_ Python have them?

If you go back 20-25 years, I think we'd see the that the two languages were in relatively similar states. Since then, Python has pulled ahead. So what made that happen?

This is simple. Python was already increasing its user base all those years ago, while Perl was not doing so at the same rate (note that I think Perl _was_ increasing at least through 2010 or so).

But since all the nice features we're talking about came _after_ that time, I think there must have been something else that caused people to pick Python over Perl. It can't have been features!

So what was it? I'm not sure. I can come up with a few ideas.

1. The Perl community (and p5p especially) could be quite toxic back then. It took a long time for p5p to adopt even the most minimal standards of behavior. But maybe Python was just as bad back then too? I can't say.
2. Random luck. Someone with influence at Google liked Python more than Perl so it became the blessed scripting language there. Google was a huge influence on other companies in the early 2000s. This is my "butterfly effect" theory.
3. Python really is easier to learn and grow with. I personally don't enjoy Python that much but I've only written it recently, after 20+ years of Perl, so my experience is definitely not representative.

Or maybe some combo of the 3? Some other thing entirely?

But whatever it is, I think it happened 20-25 years ago. Anything that happened in the last 10-15 years seems like an effect to me, not a cause.

That all said, I wonder what Python's future looks like. Most of my work these days is in Go or Rust. When I have to write Python I _really_ miss having a modern(-ish in the case of Go) type system. I honestly can't imagine going back to an untyped language in the future. Type systems used to require a lot of toil, but with modern type inferencing and LSP support, types are great!