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