[andy_adams]

One of the main findings of the SO survey was that Python is indeed rising, overtaking other languages as one of the most popular and desired, so although it was popular in the past, it's definitely rising.

Most everything else you said could also be said of Ruby - docs, helpful community, flexibility from scripting up to massive webapps. That's what perplexes me - what are the "more of the things people actually want" specifically that drive Python's growth?

[diminoten]

It's degrees. Sure Ruby has those things too, but Python's is better/more comprehensive.

Go look at the releases up from 3.4 of Python. The features that have been added since then are pretty specifically what the community has been asking for. asyncio being integrated into the language, type hinting, f strings, just to name a few.

But yeah, it's not about "does it check the box" at this point with language like Python and Ruby, it's about how they check the box, and to what degree. Simply having a feature isn't enough.

[h1d]

It's really sad that those smart people can name a programming language as 'Go' and I get confused whether you've started talking about it or was just a verb...