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Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

It is very interesting to watch the rise and expansion of Python. I'm interested in the thoughts others have to why this is. Is it that it's to learn? Easy to read? Easy to extend? Whatever the cause, I'm glad that I'm learning it for Math too. Similar to the OP's observations, many of the holes when I got started have been filled.

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All of the above. Because it's easy to read, it's easy to learn. I think python has nearly perfect syntax. Not sure why more others don't mimic it. Tab/ws instead of braces makes the code prettier and accomplishes what curly braces do. I still believe that the perfect language will look like python but run like c. We have the language, but not the implementation.

>Tab/ws instead of braces makes the code prettier and accomplishes what curly braces do.

Except they don't. Curly braces allow unambiguous indentation, python syntax doesn't. This means refactoring code is always harder in Python than in any other language. This is why other languages do not adopt this syntax.

Haskell?

In my opinion, Python is good enough at a lot of different tasks. I don't think is the best possible language for everything, but it's close enough that it's better than having to keep more languages in your head.

I do a mix of math programming and general programming and I'd like to stay in one language if feasible. I would far rather use a well-designed, general-purpose language with math libraries than try to use a mathematical language for general-purpose programming.

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