In this thread I am seeing a number of explanations, including:
Ecosystem; mind-share; readability and engineering mind-set; history/Numpy/Matlab; teachability and academic focus.
There are also comments emphasizing the "dynamic" scientific environment and need to just pick up code left by others.
In terms of the latter, could one apparent requirement be this: The main contact should be with top-level code which at least looks like it is interpreted -- even if through compile-with-run-combined and/or memoization? Need part of the user interface, so to speak, be to hide all intermediate artifacts, even the very thought of object code and executables? That such stuff is for, say, "module creators" not primary users?
Ecosystem; mind-share; readability and engineering mind-set; history/Numpy/Matlab; teachability and academic focus.
There are also comments emphasizing the "dynamic" scientific environment and need to just pick up code left by others.
In terms of the latter, could one apparent requirement be this: The main contact should be with top-level code which at least looks like it is interpreted -- even if through compile-with-run-combined and/or memoization? Need part of the user interface, so to speak, be to hide all intermediate artifacts, even the very thought of object code and executables? That such stuff is for, say, "module creators" not primary users?