The syntax, I think, is also the least likely to scare off newbie programmers. Personally, I came to really dislike the Python syntax, but it reads rather well

The syntax, I think, is also the least likely to scare off newbie programmers. Personally, I came to really dislike the Python syntax, but it reads rather well, is very unintimidating, and easily supports the kinds of things that newbies will be doing. Not to rag on Python, but I found the indent-sensitivity of Python can make it challenging to do the sort of basic things that C-family languages make fairly simple. Lambdas in Python suck in contrast to how lambdas and anonymous functions work in other languages. But yeah, Python has proven itself to be a great language for a wide variety of applications. It makes a lot of sense for the scientific community probably because things like heavy object orientation matter a lot less in those cases. The community doesn't discourage people from just writing functions, unlike other communities that are hellbent in making everything a method of some class structure and being explicit about that.