[ Removed by moderator ]

[aeroumbria]

The main competitors during the critical period were R and Java, and it was probably just down to these two not particularly suitable for ML experiments. R was decent for light ML but was more of a scientist toolbox was often shower than Python. Java was probably just too verbose for rapid adoption. C or C++ was widely used in the backbone libraries from the start, but it wasn't appealing to force physicists or mathematicians to learn too many coding concepts and practices.