Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

Perceptions of Python’s Popularity

• Some argue Python’s prominence is mostly “ecosystem lock‑in”: it’s what students are taught, so more libraries get written, reinforcing its dominance.
• Others say that’s backwards: Python became popular before it was widely taught, because it was easier and nicer than Perl and other scripting languages, and had “batteries included.” Teaching followed existing adoption.
• One commenter sees the JetBrains blog as simple product marketing, not proof that Python’s popularity is fragile; another is suspicious of “booster” pieces and of PSF/corporate influence.

Language Strengths Highlighted

• High readability and “executable pseudocode” feel make it accessible to non‑CS users and cross‑disciplinary work.
• The REPL/IPython workflow is valued for interactive exploration, debugging, and data analysis.
• Vast standard and third‑party library ecosystem means “rarely reinventing the wheel.”
• Easy interop with C/Cython/Rust allows moving hot spots to faster languages while keeping Python as the glue.

Common Criticisms and Pain Points

• Complaints about dynamic features: implicit variable creation, runtime typos, weak/optional typing, reliance on naming conventions for privacy.
• Performance: slow execution, startup overhead, poor energy efficiency, GIL and blocking behavior complicating parallelism.
• Packaging and environment management (pip, dependency hell) viewed as weak; uv is praised as overdue progress.
• Some see class‑heavy libraries as over‑engineered, exacerbating the “expression problem.”

Python in Science, ML, and Education

• Widely used in scientific computing; several researchers report entire labs running Python, with other languages rare.
• Disagreement whether ML “made Python” or Python’s prior academic traction (NumPy/SciPy as MATLAB alternative) pulled ML into its orbit.
• Critics worry non‑CS scientists produce slow, unstructured scripts; defenders argue the real alternative was “no science” or proprietary tools.

Comparisons to Other Languages

• JS/TypeScript praised for modern tooling and strong typing, but its ecosystem also seen as hacky and fragile.
• Go and Rust favored for performance, static binaries, and stronger type systems; some accept slower Python for faster development.
• Julia and Raku cited as cleaner for numerics (rationals, multiple dispatch), sparking debate over floating‑point semantics vs performance.

Design Philosophy and Governance Debates

• Some still credit Python’s success to early design “taste” and simplicity/readability maxims.
• Others feel later additions (e.g., the walrus operator, stdlib cruft) erode that aesthetic and highlight governance tensions.