[dx034]

> Python's continued popularity surprises me. While I like Python and it is good for data science I don't understand why people use it for websites. The PHP and Ruby ecosystems are far more mature if you consider ease of use and if you are going for performance, Go and Java based frameworks are better. Even in the data world, I kind of like R over Python.

Python is very easy to use and often targeted towards non-programmers. You'll find a lot of tutorials online that don't require any previous knowledge of programming, different to other languages. At the same time, Python is popular with many full-time programmers which gives you the feeling that you learn a professional language very easily.

I personally think it's nice for scripts that only run once or need to be adapted continuously, which is often the case in data analysis. I switched from R to Python, I found function naming in R so confusing that I constantly had to Google basics even after years of using it.

[throwaway2016a]

> Python is very easy to use and often targeted towards non-programmers.

Maybe that is my problem is I am coming at it as someone who knew 10 programming languages before even looking at Python. But my wife is trying to learn Python right now and she's not a code (she's an biomedical engineer) and I can't say her experience learning it has gone any smoother than it would have with some of the other languages.

> I switched from R to Python

R suffers from the same problem as PHP. The standard library is too large, does too much, and grew organically. So you have things like inconsistant naming. I do agree that is horribly frustrating about R.