I was fresh at university, around 2001, and our mathematics professor introduced us to Python with NumPy/SciPy as an alternative to the commercial math tools. There aren't many events that changed my career as much as that. Being exposed only to compiled languages before that, it blew my mind. It was friendly, expressive and came with batteries included.
There was a huge sense of community around Python, that I didn't really see elsewhere in the programming world. It started with these scientific libraries. Python wouldn't be what Python is today without NumPy. It was nice to see in the last years the boost of the Python scientific community, with basically anything machine learning using Python as the DSL.
> It started with these scientific libraries.
I disagree. The scientific libraries were just one of many niches, and an awkward one at that. One could equally say "it started with xml libraries" or "it started with file-handling libraries" or "it started with http libraries" -- all of which were in the Standard Library very early, unlike the horrible-to-build numpy/scipy. All of these made the language popular initially across a number of different crowds. Numpy/scipy reached traction relatively late when Python was already well-established in niches like sysadmin, web, education, 3D, and many others. By 2001 we already had multiple web frameworks, Zope, even WSGI...
It is occasionally annoying how this or that crowd tries to appropriate Python's success, hence flattening its purposes and aims.
But all the other use cases were covered back then primarily by Perl. Python was the first dynamic language to effectively use this class of libraries.
I had been using Perl from 1995-2000. I was a fairly advanced Perl programmer (was there for the Perl 4 -> 5 transition), using it mostly for automating system administration tasks.
In 2000 I joined a new startup and was shown Python 1.5.2 by the startup's chief architect/scientists. He'd come from Infoseek where he'd used it there to help build parts of the company.
Now, I loved Perl. I was one of those annoying geeks with "RSA in 4 lines of Perl" T-shirt. I'd write JAPH programs for fun. But I appreciated how much "smaller" Python was than Perl. I was able to learn pretty much all of its rules in an hour? I didn't have to worry about all the crazy ways Perl programs could express themselves. (Is this scalar context or array context?[^1] Is this script using my or local? What the heck does this crazy line I didn't write do again? Oh wait, I wrote that line!)
So anyway, this startup was using Python and now so was I.
That startup is long gone, but I'm still using Python daily in my career.
And I've never used numpy.
Perl was/is great, but it's just too quirky to have the broad appeal of Python.
[^1]: "It's all about context": https://archive.ph/IB2kR
FWIW I learned Perl in 2016, and it became my language of choice (sorta) for ~6 months, but the overwhelming momentum of Python is hard to avoid. Perl was/is cool though!
In my university, we were given a choice to use either Matlab or Python for exercises in many advanced courses. We even got Matlab licenses for our personal computers. But since the smallest Matlab installation still came in at several GB and my personal computer was always full with games, I chose the python stack which came in at maybe 100-200 MB for all relevant packages, while nearly everyone else chose Matlab. None of them have ever used Matlab again after University and I still use Python all the time.
2001? But wasn't NumPy created in 2005? Apparently its predecessor was called Numeric.