I think community played a huge role... the language basically want viral in terms of people sharing code, libraries, tutorials, and commentary. Timing may hav

I think community played a huge role... the language basically want viral in terms of people sharing code, libraries, tutorials, and commentary. Timing may have helped too. My impression is that I started hearing about Python around the same time that the devs at my workplace were just waking up to open source, and Python was something that I could try out at home without anybody's permission.