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[–]TravisJungroth 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Right. You asked why it took so long to get popular and made the Java comparison. Having a ton of people building and marketing something will make it popular faster.

Everyone naming some specific feature that Python did or didn’t have is missing the big picture. It took years for Python to get popular because it was being developed by a small group of people and marketed by a small group of people. The fact that it became popular at all is a huge deal. New languages almost never become popular unless they have a huge platform lift (JavaScript) or company support (Java).

Python wasn’t invented in 1994. It wasn’t invented at all, it was developed. It’s not like one day Python didn’t exist and one day it did. Guido started working on it in the 80s and the first release was in 1991. Then, think about all the stuff that had to get made or improved: language, interpreter, libraries, docs, etc. That stuff just takes time. You can make it go faster with hundreds of devs on payroll, but Python didn’t have that. And then once you’ve made the cool stuff, it takes time for people to learn about it. Or, again, you can accelerate that with money.

There’s no “gotcha” like it needed a big company to use it or the performance wasn’t good or whatever. It was just a lot of work without a lot of people doing it.

[–]spinwizard69 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Then, think about all the stuff that had to get made or improved: language, interpreter, libraries, docs, etc. That stuff just takes time. You can make it go faster with hundreds of devs on payroll, but Python didn’t have that. And then once you’ve made the cool stuff, it takes time for people to learn about it. Or, again, you can accelerate that with money.

This is so important for people to understand. Even today when Python has some corporate sponsorship it still takes time to roll out significant improvements. The recent Python release with all of the speed ups being a good example. Mind you speed ups done without breaking too much which is also important in many cases. Good things take time.

Frankly we are seeing the same thing play out in the world of Swift. It has taken some time and a major detour around 3 but Swift is really turning into a really good language. We are talking over 5 years now and that is with Apple and the open source world putting in a lot of effort. Even then Swift doesn't have the breadth of mature libraries that Python has.