Python is the best and most popular general purpose scripting language; the universal scripting language

[RPM1]

"Ron Stephens"  wrote
<snip>

> I guess my main point is, Python is the best general purpose scripting
> language. Maybe I (and maybe some other folks too?) sort of wanted
> Python to out-compete Java and C#: but it isn't happening. Likewise,
> as someone said, Perl is definitely more popular still than Python,
> BUT, I think Python is more general purpose than Perl. Perl has a heck
> of a lot of libraries (CPAN etc) and Perl is great for text
> processing; I also can't help but notice that Perl is the most
> commonly available and well supported language for CGI. But Perl
> doesn't get used for apps like Zope and Chandler, Python does. PHP is,
> for that matter, more popular than Python also, but for a limited
> problem domain.
>
> For better or worse, Python isn't going to be as entrenched in the
> corporate world as Java or .Net any time soon. Neither is Python going
> to displace PHP as most popular in PHP's domain, nor will Python even
> surpass Perl in absolute terms any time soon.
>
> BUT, Python is the most general purpose of the scripting languages and
> this gives Python a very interesting niche for the long term. Having
> Jython and now IronPython is a nice long term situation also.

>From what I've seen over the years, it seems like one of Python's
strong niches is scientific and numeric computing, which seems
like a weird place for a "scripting language" to excel.  It's probably
due to Python's talent at wrapping C and Fortran code.  Python
does for programmers what GUI's do for users.

Just my $0.02
Patrick