Python definitely started with very good ideas and whatever success it has achieved is by merit and not marketing power or reputation of a company behind. Clean

Python definitely started with very good ideas and whatever success it has achieved is by merit and not marketing power or reputation of a company behind. Clean syntax, a decent object model, good documentation. Good taste in general. But it's older than Java, think about that. Has it aged worse than other languages? Are Python libraries worse than Java's? Package management? Has Python more cruft? Is it harder to install? At this point it's part inertia and network effects, although you should check the alternatives in ML: R, SAS, Matlab... I think Julia is better, but it has made some decisions not everyone likes. Static typing for ML, you may think, that would be awesome. Well, I think the language that got closest to it was Scala but it never escaped Spark.