"Javascript has grown a rather nice async ecosystem that Python just doesn't have. It's also exciting for people from the standpoint that everything feels newer and more up for grabs. Python is a rather old language."
Python old? Not to be snarky, but I've got programs for the PDP-11 that dated Python's great-grandmother. Excitement in a language doesn't cut it, I respect productivity, environment and progress. For automation, data munging and analysis, Python is my secret weapon in a shop of MS SQL Server DBA's and C# ditto heads. Would have be nice if MS would have adapted IronPython instead of creating PowerShell...
Yes, there are oodles of crappy Turning complete programming languages, but there's definative advantages to a much smaller sub-set of decent langauges and environments.