[dalke]

I work in a chemistry research field. Most people I know run Python programs for their research. No one I know uses Go. I only know a handful who use Java. Rust and Julia are oddities that appear occasionally.

Sure, we have very different experiences. But that also means that unless you can present strong survey data, it's hard to know if your "Most people" is limited to the people you associate with, or is something more broadly true.

The PSF overlap with my field is essentially zero. I mean, I was that overlap, but I stopped being involved with the PSF about 8 years ago when my youngest was born and I had no free time or money. In the meanwhile, meaningful PSF involvement became less something a hobbyist project and something more corporatized .. and corporate friendly.

> scientists (who buy expensive training courses)

ROFL!! What scientists are paying for expensive training courses?!

I tried selling training courses to computational chemists. It wasn't worth the time needed to develop and maintain the materials. The people who attended the courses liked them, but the general attitude is "I spent 5 years studying <OBSCURE TOPIC> for my PhD, I can figure out Python on my own."

> who are force fed Python at university

shrug I was force fed Pascal, and have no idea if Wirth was a nice person.

> main reason for its popularity in machine learning

I started using Python in the 1990s both because of the language and because of the ease of writing C extensions, including reference counting gc, since the C libraries I used had hidden data dependencies that simple FFI couldn't handle.

I still use the C API -- direct, through Cython, and through FFI -- and I don't do machine learning.

> If it is so popular, why the booster articles?

It's an article about a company which sells a Python IDE. They do it to boost their own product.

With so many people clearly using Python, why would they spend time boosting something else?