Why is Python's popularity a good thing in itself? If all the people making plots in pandas just used R, the world would be very much the same. Pandas promotes

Why is Python's popularity a good thing in itself? If all the people making plots in pandas just used R, the world would be very much the same. Pandas promotes bad software practices in my experience with it's horrible bloated interface. It has cost me a lot of time-- for no benefit whatsoever. I am actually pretty sure it was released to slow the pace of competing quantitative hedge funds.