My gut feeling is that it succeeded due to escaping scrutiny. I had heard enough critiques of the language from CL folks but the rest of the world was just happy to get a nicer Perl that could be used to glue together C code into useful apps and scripts.
With respect, lispers are probably not the best people to ask how to make a widely adopted language.
Regardless, you’re regurgitating exactly what I said. Your gut is that Python was just a slightly better replacement for Perl. This is at best one dimension. If you can’t broaden your perspective, then this thread full of examples and arguments for why Python became popular will be lost on you.
If you’re so confident in your assessment, why did you bother to ask?
> My gut feeling is that it succeeded due to escaping scrutiny.
Basically every languages mostly escapes scrutiny except from very niche corners (usually people deeply committed to other languages that aren't actually considering alternatives, but criticizing everything that isn't their preferred language for not being their preferred language) until it succeeds, because there are enough of them that basically no one cares to put the time into scrutinizing them until they achieve a critical mass.
That's not why Python succeeded against other languages.
> My gut feeling is that it succeeded due to escaping scrutiny.
You keep saying it, but from 2000-2010, what scrutiny did it escape, exactly?
Are you saying when universities dropped Java/C++ for the introductory course and replaced it with Python, they simply threw dice to pick the language?
Are you saying all the Perl programmers who kept saying "Python will never have the power of CPAN" didn't exist?
Are you saying Eric Raymond never wrote an essay on the virtues of Python?
