It's this sort of stuff that leaves me scratching my head why people like Python so much. I hear them say they prefer the syntax and personally I feel like that's such a small part of the holistic experience of working with any particular language. It's one of the reasons why I gave up on C++ years ago for .NET, the whole system of tooling in .NET has never left me feeling like I was pigeonholed into doing things in stupid, self-flagelating ways. Why should I use a language like C++ that doesn't provide a standard set of package management and build tools? Why should I use a language like Python that feels like it's being designed by amateurs?<p>I felt like the tooling in Racket, CLisp, and Java were similarly pragmatic and not either religiously devoted to some concept of "backwards compatibility" that I seriously doubt most people actually need, or "ease of use" that actually proves itself to be easy when you consider the not-happy-path of the beginner tutorials. Racket, I didn't continue just because the library ecosystem isn't mature enough to keep up with the latest in databases and other 3rd party services. Java I quit largely because of Oracle and some 2010s problems with stagnation. CLisp mostly because it was too hard to socialize. But never because I thought the core language and tooling were holding me back.
It's easy to start learning on, or prototype with, and then sometimes momentum just keeps it going. Also it may not really be the best at anything, but it's "pretty good" at just about everything. It's kind of like vanilla ice cream.<p>Packaging can be irritating although uv takes the sting out a bit.<p>You are right that outside of verbosity, once you get used to the syntax of a language, the value of one over the other kind of fades.
> It's this sort of stuff that leaves me scratching my head why people like Python so much<p>Because of the libraries, not necessarily the language. For example we found a niche library that speaks the ISO-TP protocol in Python, which allows us to communicate with vehicle ECUs.
Python is mostly about the “batteries included” standard library and what’s becoming nearly standard third party libs, being able to play around in the REPL,