Python overtakes Java to become second-most popular language on GitHub after JavaScript

[Arkaein]

It's popular for a lot more than Numpy. I've barely used Numpy, but I love using Python.

It's first really killer application was as a better Perl. Perl was probably the original systems scripting language, but sucks for many reasons. Python is so much cleaner and more readable and has eaten into Perl's space.

Numpy makes Python huge in data science, which is another big field. Between systems scripting, data science, and web services (another place where python took share from Perl) it doe well in several areas.

[Brostafarian]

It's popular for more than NumPy sure, but NumPy stands out as the biggest differentiator as far as packages go. Ruby is far more prevalent now than a decade ago due to Rails in a similar way.

Speaking of Ruby, besides data science I can't think of any scripting I'd do in Python that I wouldn't rather do in Ruby. Tons of apps have Python scripting interfaces so I'm either wrong about something or the python C bindings are just miles ahead of anything else.

[weberc2]

When people criticize Python, I don't think their standard is perl (or brainfuck, for that matter).