And yet it is one of the top 10 most popular languages. There might be something to learn from the discipline and balance of not pushing the boundaries of programming too hard?
I don't think that conclusion follows. Yes, it's popular. No, Python is not disciplined nor balanced. Popularity is really more about social dynamics than anything.
I don’t know about social dynamics unless you mean most programs in the world aren’t written by senior software engineers. Python is easy to understand to write a script or small web service. Scala or Haskell can never be the most popular for that exact reason.