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Your analogy is false. Python is popular because it is popular - it has momentum. That's pretty much the only reason.

The reason for pythons popularity is only because it’s popular? Not because it’s suited to any particular task?

Then no doubt the majority of those 100 people would use the toothbrush to hammer the nail. It is after all a far more popular tool.

Again, that comparison makes no sense. Python became somewhat popular for a reason and that built momentum but it didn't get to the current popularity because it's a superior language for any task - rather because many people use it and write tutorials, answer questions on SO, and write libraries and tools.

Python had a number of similar competitors a few years back, the main one being Perl. Python is better than Perl for certain tasks, the syntax encourages writing more readable code. Personally I like Perl, but if I am doing anything non trivial, Python will give me more maintainable code. Perl has a more expressive syntax, which is both a blessing and a curse.

Then you have PHP, which is (or at least was) an inferior langauge to Python when python started getting popular. Python does more that just web dev. Likewise with Ruby.

Python could easily be described as "better" depending on the task.

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