I rather find tragic that contrary to other dynamic languages, Python seems to fall under the curse of rewriting bindings into C and C++, or nowadays more fashionable Rust.
And yes, Smalltalk, Self and various Lisp variants are just as dynamic.
And yes, Smalltalk, Self and various Lisp variants are just as dynamic.
It became idiomatic as there was no other alternative.
(Besides, no language has this regardless of native extensions: a huge part of Python’s success comes from the fact that there isn’t a perfect graph of competencies in the community, and instead that community members provide high quality abstractions over their respective competencies.)
One of the pain points from Python is exactly native libraries and getting them compiled.
It’s my impression as a maintainer of many projects that native compilation hasn’t been a driving issue in Python packaging for a while now. Most users download wheels and sidestep the entire problem. Whether or not they should trust random binaries from the internet is of course a bigger question.
Rather being a better Perl for UNIX scripts and Zope CMS, there was no other reason to use Python in 2000.