Python had a number of similar competitors a few years back, the main one being Perl. Python is better than Perl for certain tasks, the syntax encourages writin

Python had a number of similar competitors a few years back, the main one being Perl. Python is better than Perl for certain tasks, the syntax encourages writing more readable code. Personally I like Perl, but if I am doing anything non trivial, Python will give me more maintainable code. Perl has a more expressive syntax, which is both a blessing and a curse. Then you have PHP, which is (or at least was) an inferior langauge to Python when python started getting popular. Python does more that just web dev. Likewise with Ruby. Python could easily be described as "better" depending on the task.