As a physicist who spent a decade in academia, including a PhD where all the new work was done in Python, it absolutely won in some fields by beating - or rathe

As a physicist who spent a decade in academia, including a PhD where all the new work was done in Python, it absolutely won in some fields by beating - or rather, by conveniently wrapping - Fortran. (In particular, that’s how things have gone in the materials physics/solid-state/quantum chemistry field. It absolutely beat out Matlab in other fields. One of the underrated benefits was being a lingua franca across more of physics!)