[alaties]

I went to college starting 2007 (right when CUDA was released) and recall a few things about python that made it attractive in both the comp sci and math departments at my school.

  - python integrated well with lesson plans instructors had
  - python integrated well with the software math departments were using (like MATLAB)
  - python had a very easy to use interpreter environment that worked well on linux, mac, and windows
  - python had (for the era) a massive standard library, making it way easier to consume and process 
    common data file formats like XML or CSV without having to install any extensions 
    (installing extensions usually required admin permissions and... very few at school had those for very good reasons)
  - exposing c/fortran libraries into python was pretty straightforward to do and was relatively stable compared to alternatives.

Around 2007, the main competitors in the scripting space had a lot of issues:

  - tcl - somewhat popular for embedding but didn't really have a standalone interpreter that made it easy to interact
    with and the syntax didn't really look like C, and really not much of a library to work with

  - lua - similar to tcl, popular for embedding but didn't have a popular standalone runtime and interpreter.
    syntax was closer to C though. didn't have much of a library to work with

  - ruby - had a runtime for experimenting but a less stable API for integrating, plus the language was pretty
    different from C. the library was large but had a larger reliance on installing extensions than python at the time.

  - perl - both unstable and had a horrible reputation by this point as a standalone language that outside of some obtuse
    systems scripting, most people didn't want to touch this with a 12-foot pole. standard library was small and relied a lot on extensions.

  - php - similarly unstable (at the time... i think 5.3 had just come out) and had a horrible reputation... also not even
    sure it had a runtime that worked outside of an apache/nginx context... exposing a c library to PHP at this time was pretty
    straightforward though. relied very heavily on extensions at this point.

  - javascript - node.js hadn't come out at this point... so the idea of running javascript outside of a browser window wasn't really a thing yet.

If one were looking to expose CUDA to programmers who didn't want to work in C during this era, I'd argue that python was just the best option at the time.

I believe that led to a first-mover advantage that has held over time.

[hot_gril]

The usability without extensions part is underrated. Whether I'm a beginner in school or a pro trying to hammer out a quick script, I would prefer the thing that doesn't make me jump through hoops to deal with CSV JSON XML etc. Far more important than the language syntax or other things.

And the little scripts I write at work tend to grow and then turn into full-fledged services in a shorter period of time than it would've taken to set up the C++ or whatever boilerplate.

[RadiozRadioz]

> Perl [...] unstable

Huh? Please elaborate. The backwards compatibility is excellent. The core has been rock solid since the 90s. Especially compared to Py -2-to-3- thon.

[mkl]

In 2007 Perl (to outsiders at least) seemed deep in Perl 6's "redesign and rewrite everything" phase, with no end in sight and no predictable future.

[anthk]

Perl6 is no Perl it has been renamed to Raku. The rest of the Perl5 environment it's ultra-compatible with previous releases. Albeit compiling PDL it's rough case.

You look like never touched Perl seriously, Raku it's still a hard deviation.

No one used Perl6 on real life environments. It's the Duke Nukem Forever of the programming languages.

Using Perl6 as an argument on Perl5 it's like bashing the simple and clean ANSI C giving C++ as the example and its the crazy redundant features as a rant.

[mkl]

Read the first two words of my comment again.

We're talking about the choice of Python for ML when CUDA came along, nearly 20 years ago. Upthread, alaties said:

> Around 2007, the main competitors in the scripting space had a lot of issues: [...]

> Perl [...] unstable

RadiozRadios replied:

> Huh? Please elaborate.

I did.

In 2007, Perl 6 was not Raku, it was intended to be the next major version of Perl. But it had been in development for ~7 years already, couldn't be relied on or predicted, and had become a bit of a joke. Since Perl 6 was still supposed to be the future of Perl, in 2007 Perl very much seemed unstable and unsuitable as a foundation for ML research.

[anthk]

I agree on Perl's choice. But Perl5 was granted as an stable platform, kinda like AWK, pretty much unlike Perl6, which wasn't the future of the current Perl5 at all, except for the hype.

[estebank]

Remember Perl 6?

[pklausler]

scheme/guile?

[bitwize]

Didn't have a popular standalone interpreter. Also unstable.

Well, it's as true of Guile as it is of Tcl and Perl...