Come to think of it, STScI, which is where those developers worked (and maybe still do), was always a favorable environment for Python. Back in the early 2000s

Come to think of it, STScI, which is where those developers worked (and maybe still do), was always a favorable environment for Python. Back in the early 2000s, before Numpy was a thing, STScI developed an image-file-reader for Python called PyFITS, and an underlying array extension to Python that allowed multiple base types, slicing, etc., called numarray (e.g., see https://scipy.github.io/old-wiki/pages/History_of_SciPy.html https://scipy.github.io/old-wiki/pages/History_of_SciPy.html). In some sense, STScI might have been expected to prefer Python to JS.