Python has caught up to Java in terms of popularity. I suspect this is largely due to the fact that typically development in Python is faster than in Java. The fact that it tends to be slower at run-time tends to be a non-issue in most cases.
Python is also easier to learn for non-programmers (while still remaining in the imperative paradigm which many feel is more “natural”) - so it tends to be the weapon of choice of domain experts having to automate stuff (which is what programming essentially is). PHP became popular to “quickly whip up a web site” - Python has a similar appeal to “quickly whip up a program/script”.
(Having said that I suspect that if the JavaScript ecosystem didn’t exist to sink a lot of “developer hate”, Python would be receiving it instead.)
Aside: mozilla.org: Bedrock is a Django Project
Python has positioned itself in the cloud space as a “productive” language - i.e. faster development times than with C, C++, C#, Go, Java, Kotlin etc. (while at the same time not being JavaScript). The tradeoff is that you may require more computational resources at runtime than for a compiled language. Truth is - if your service is profitable enough most businesses don’t care that they could lower the operational cost because they view the gain of efficiency as marginal compared to the perceived cost of (re)development.
For example look at this case:
Summary: Ignore Python at your own peril (try to be a Language Agnostic).
