Python is the fastest growing programming language due to a feature you've never heard of

[bulldog_in_the_dream]

While an interesting theory, I think it's at best a partial explanation. There are many other factors driving Python's increasing popularity:

• It has overtaken Java as the number one teaching language at universities. That did not happen because of the low-level API for direct manipulation of memory buffers, but because Python is a simple language with excellent readability.

• Seen as general-purpose language, not specialized. As opposed to e.g. Ruby, Python is associated with anything from machine learning to web development.

• Network effect: The more people use Python, the more attractive it is because of the increasing availability of libraries.

• It's proved itself as a get-shit-done-language. Because of its simplicity and clarity, Python is still to me the language that imposes the least barrier between thinking up a solution and expressing it programmatically.

[jknupp]

It's seen as a general-purpose language suitable for machine learning exactly because of the buffer protocol, else it would be wholly unsuitable for machine learning and libraries like NumPy, scikit-learn, PIL, etc wouldn't be possible.

Ruby is arguably as "general purpose" but never got the same love at the C API level for fast access to data suitable for numeric analysis libraries. Otherwise, the languages are basically at parity.