[kjeetgill]

I wouldn't call it sudden at all. Python is great for the reason Java is great: diverse robust ecosystem for a ton of different fields. It's about ubiquity.

It's installed on virtually everything already. It's one of the easiest languages to learn (the basics), and is used as a teaching language. Even outside of CS everyone knows it.

Used in web programming (Django, Flask, etc.), numerical computing (Jupyter, numpy, scipy, pandas), AI/ML (TensorFlow, scikit-learn), bioinformatics, easy bindings to EVERYTHING (openCV, bullet physics, kafka, zookeeper, protobuf, json, xml).

It's usually concise enough, mostly straightforward to read, reasonably structured (though big codebases can become a pain). In most companies you see python used in tooling ALL THE TIME. It's fantastic for ducktape programming; often 'promoting' a largeish bash script to python. It ate perl's place there before.

I've even seen ipython work well as a login shell. Jeezz.

Sure the 2.7 -> 3 thing was a ton of drama, the package manager situation changes ever few years, but hey: a lesser language and ecosystem would have fallen apart under it.

Disclaimer: I'm a Java+Python fan boy in all their incarnations.

[cutler]

There'a a fan boy for Java?

[mgkimsal]

> I'm a Java+Python fan boy in all their incarnations.

Yet not mention of jython :)

[kjeetgill]

Fan of Jython (though I have a few gripes) excited for graalpython.

If you can get really really good interop you can throw away half of Spring, Guice, dependency injection, etc.

You can use python code as your configuration format. Have it set everything up. Glue all of your Java pieces together for your service. Runtime is and critical paths are all Java.

That's the dream anyhow.

[vgy7ujm]

Not a replacement for Perl no. It was a great sales trick but as we know a sales trick is not about the truth. But thankfully all the crappy code gets written in Python or JS these days.