[gnulinux]

> makes me question my s/e belief system

That's a good thing! Models are fit on data, data doesn't fit to models. This is like when people learn elementary music theory then go analyze some actual composer and it doesn't fit the model at all. Well kiddo the problem is that "music theory" is simply a model, a model people created after training some very limit set of musical data, everything outside of that data will probably behave different and you'll have to change your models.

If your software engineering model predicts Python would be unsuccessful, but there is evidence that Python is successful, this simply means your software engineering model is unpredictive and therefore must be revised.