[Alex3917]

It's because Python tends to be the most common programming language for startups due to being easy to hire for, having good library support for a wide range of use cases, being good for web development, etc. And MySQL is focused on catering to enterprise customers who don't use Python. The last time I heard, they had something like one person working part time on Python support, so the drivers weren't nearly as reliable as the Postgres tooling.

[simonw]

Python has had rock-solid, widely used MySQL libraries for well over a decade. I've never seen evidence that MySQL and Python aren't a strong (and popular) combination.

[fbernier]

Pretty sure there are more or at least as much startups using Ruby, JS, PHP, Java before Python.

[gnarbarian]

seems like that would be pretty tough to get reliable stats on something like that.

http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index

[rco8786]

Err, no. Python probably isn't even in the top 5 of languages startups choose for their main stack.

[bnchrch]

Not the most sound method but I was demonstrating the relative popularity of programming languages to my SO the other day using find in the Who's Hiring thread for May and python was the most popular.

Surprised me as well.

[superuser2]

A ton more companies have some Python scripts than Python as a primary development language; this skews naive keyword matching assessments of job postings.

[gaius]

What is then?

One thing that's always bemused me is that YC doesn't insist on its companies using Lisp :-)