I think it's interesting to note the primary usecases / benefits mentioned: more readable than perl, better syntax than bash, easy to follow stacktraces. In short: an object-oriented scripting language. In that respect I think python has succeeded, probably beyond even the author's wildest dreams. And I love python, it's a language I use almost every day. The areas where it falls short are those which it was never designed for, as this announcement reminds us.