[kbenson]

> Had Perl or Ruby been the premier language to use for DS/ML, they would be growing instead of Python.

Well Perl was the premiere data science language for a while. Python made inroads and eventually took over. I think you're mostly right through, it's just a matter of other factors affecting the communities at the time causing Perl to not grow nearly as quick as Python, and Python getting a good numeric library. Had Perl not lost a lot of community in the early 2000's, it might have retained this area.

[cutler]

Perl just lost the plot. I think BioPerl was ahead of the game before the Python scientific libraries stole the show so they only have themselves to blame. Perl's successor Ruby seems to be headed in the same direction by failing to diversify which is a shame because Ruby is much better language than Python.