I'm a scientist with an extensive scientific/numerical computing background. I was taught PL/I as my first language. My "load bearing" language path was Fortra

I'm a scientist with an extensive scientific/numerical computing background. I was taught PL/I as my first language. My "load bearing" language path was Fortran -> (Forth) -> C -> C++(YUCK!) -> Python/Numeric/Numpy/scipy/et al. I'm now dabbling with Julia. In addition to Numpy (and it's predecessors) making array computation dead easy to express (slices!) for me personally it boiled down to Guido having taste that matched my own. I'm sure that YMMV...