> . But why didn't Perl or Ruby (or Tcl) win? That is a very good question. IIRC at the time Perl had a bad reputation because of the weird syntax "$%@" (not

> . But why didn't Perl or Ruby (or Tcl) win? That is a very good question. IIRC at the time Perl had a bad reputation because of the weird syntax "$%@" (not weird to shell programmers, so much, but they were weird...) Python was "object orientated" and from a computer scientist. Perl is very imperative and informal. Python felt to people like a real language, Perl did not. I am reaching for reasons as I was very disappointed that Python was the winner. I have never liked Python (personal taste - meaningful white space? Really?) and knew Perl very well. (Perl Vs. PHP is a different, much more interesting, and tragic story)