Python -- (just) a successful experiment?

[Roy Smith]

"Paul Boddie" <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> Perl had the "cool tool" buzz a good ten years ago.

That's true, but I think it understates just how important a development 
Perl really was.

Before Perl, unix scripting consisted of awk, sed, grep, tr, a random 
assortment of incompatible shells, and lots of duct tape.  For all of its 
faults, there is no doubt that Perl was a huge improvement over that mess.  
Much of the uglyness in Perl's syntax was a deliberate attempt to be 
backwards compatable with both awk and shell, which contributed to its 
quick uptake by the Unix sysadmin community.  

The next thing that drove its popularity is that it was quickly ported to 
run on DOS/Windows.  If there was a community even more in need of a better 
toolkit than the early Unix sysadmins, the DOS/Windows world was it.

Compared to what existed at the time, in both the Unix and DOS/Windows 
world, it was the best tool available at the time.  No question about it.  
Perl also had (AFAICT) a three-year head start on Python.  That's a lot of 
momentum to overcome.

The fact that 15+ years of experience has shown that there are better ways 
to do things, should not in any way take away from Perl's importance.  Perl 
got where it is because it filled a huge need, not just because it got good 
buzz.