[analog31]

I did something similar. I’m not a developer, but I use programming as a problem solving tool, and have written little apps for limited uses such as controlling a fixture in the factory — stuff that the devs won’t touch. My first language was BASIC on a mainframe, before I had access to a microcomputer.

I was getting sick of Visual Basic and Excel, and besides, my VB license was more than a decade old. So I went “language shopping” by trying out the same two tasks in a whole bunch of languages. And I also let myself be influenced by online discussions, blogs, etc. Between computers at work and at home, I tried out each language on both Windows and Linux. One of the tasks was computational and graphical, the other was controlling a widget connected to USB.

I ended up with Python, and have been loyal to it for 13+ years. Did I make the best choice? I can drum up a list of pro’s and con’s, but it would be based on hindsight.

[zahlman]

> I ended up with Python, and have been loyal to it for 13+ years

As another long-time Pythonista: I feel like I would have ended up with it anyway, but I do kinda wish I'd done more of that kind of experimentation around that time.

Certainly I've made mental lists of things I'd change about the language. (Not a lot of overlap with the complaints I hear most often, actually.)

[MrZorro]

I'd love to see that list, I'm really intersted in your perspective given the time you put in.

[analog31]

It was kind of a hodgepodge, since I gave myself a couple of rules. First, it had to be free. Second, it had to run on both Windows and Linux. Those were harder constraints in the 2010's.

To give a flavor, I tried Python, GCC, Javascript, and some higher level tools like Maxima and Octave. So I was certainly not systematic in my search. And trying Python coincided with a really pleasant and comfortable vacation where I had some blocks of time to play with it in peace.

The devs at my workplace had just jumped onto C#, but it was exactly during the time when C# was a mountainous download, hard to install without a good network connection, and Windows-only. I didn't relish staying dependent on Microsoft. Building a "hello world" app also seemed laborious.

Some of those issues have become meaningless, but here we are. On the other hand the growth of the Python community and ecosystem are hard to dispute.

You can see that among Python, Maxima, and Octave, you've got a REPL and a notebook style interface. At a previous job, I was a heavy Mathematica user. But Python was definitely gaining momentum compared to those other tools.

If I were to issue a complaint about Python, it's that the language has sprawled to the point where it's hard to claim that it's easy to learn unless someone helps you get started with a subset of it.

[Mielin]

Im curious to see the whole list of languages you tried, and result with each. I suspect it was related to finding suitable library for each problem (usb, graphics) more so than the language itsel. But maybe ecosystem is what we need from a language.