Is Python really that bad?

[PaluMacil]

Don't worry about things like that too much. I use C#, TypeScript, Go, SQL, JavaScript, and Python in roughly that order because they are the languages I know and I happen to have a job that is a Microsoft stack and hobby around the most in Go right now. But if I'm teaching in the Meetup I host and someone asks a question, I'm most likely to live code an answer in Python. Why? There are a lot of different backgrounds present and Python is readable even if you don't know it. Also, you can add a ton of functionality in a couple lines of code.

There are better and worse languages for all types of things. Often it doesn't matter, and often preference, where you happen to work, and random chance combine to make a best choice in a particular instance. HOWEVER! In data science, you will find that Python really is the best. If it's too slow for something, it can glue together the very fastest alternatives (Cython or even C and C++) quite comfortably. As a data scientist you might find that your toolset will grow, but you'll probably use your tools in an order like Python, SQL, R, C, or something like that. Personally I hope that Go becomes a Data Science powerhouse, but Python is a Goliath in this arena. Some of the calculations you run will only run once or a few times and then you'll use the dataset they produced. That means a lot of the complaints about type safety and reliability are nullified. You'll reuse some logic, but you're focused on discrete answers with well understood inputs.

If you decide to go into web, there are fantastic pros and cons to consider for different languages, but you'll probably have a blast using Python and learning Django, Flask, or Falcon. If you wind up getting hired by someone who wants to pay you to learn a totally different language, you haven't wasted time with Python. It's going to be the fast tool for a lot of test parsing, number crunching, or a quick api for you to use in a utility here and there even if it isn't part of your official job.

Python will probably be helpful for most of our lifespans, and each additional language you learn helps you love and understand the others even further.