> It's never the absolute best language for anything, but it's hard to improve it on any front (e.g., execution speed) without hindering it on other fronts (e.g., ad-hoc interactivity),
This belief seems common, but I always wonder if anyone with familiarity with dynamic programming languages that were implemented by people who knew what they are doing (as implementers) thinks so. Self, Smalltalk and Common Lisp, for example, are doing much better on the ad-hoc interactivity front in non-trivial ways whilst offering implementations with vastly better performance preceding (C)Python by many years. The fact that python has terrible execution speed is most due to lack of relevant skills in the community not some conscious engineering trade-off.
Having said that, I don't think you are wrong on python being "the least worst language for everything" -- very few other languages have an eco system of remotely comparable expansiveness and quality (the top minds in several disciplines mostly use python for their work) which alone kills of huge swathes of would-be-competitors.
> Having said that, I don't think you are wrong on python being "the least worst language for everything" -- very few other languages have an eco system of remotely comparable expansiveness and quality (the top minds in several disciplines mostly use python for their work) which alone kills of huge swathes of would-be-competitors.
Yes, I agree. The ecosystem is part of what makes the language "the least worst language for everything."
This belief seems common, but I always wonder if anyone with familiarity with dynamic programming languages that were implemented by people who knew what they are doing (as implementers) thinks so. Self, Smalltalk and Common Lisp, for example, are doing much better on the ad-hoc interactivity front in non-trivial ways whilst offering implementations with vastly better performance preceding (C)Python by many years. The fact that python has terrible execution speed is most due to lack of relevant skills in the community not some conscious engineering trade-off.
Having said that, I don't think you are wrong on python being "the least worst language for everything" -- very few other languages have an eco system of remotely comparable expansiveness and quality (the top minds in several disciplines mostly use python for their work) which alone kills of huge swathes of would-be-competitors.