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You're 100% right except maybe about Python. Probably the biggest reason it is used is because it actually has a REPL. You can play around easily and do things like Jupyter notebooks. That's completely unimportant for most programming but it's very useful in scientific research.

Python's REPL isn't even any good, but it does at least exist which is more than you can say for most languages.

(And there's also the fact that it's crazy popular.)

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Python's repl is pretty average IMO, iPython is a lot better, Jupyter is best in class.

Perhaps some of the old Lisp or Smalltalk environments could rival that, but no other modern language except Julia and R, which also have Jupyter support, come even close when repl ergonomics is concerned.

I can't think of a single language that doesn't have REPL functionality and Jupyter is literally developed by academics.

What? Virtually no compiled language does, and even the ones that do usually have it as a massive hack (e.g. Cling).

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