Speaking as a commercial Python developer, I can honestly say that there is a tremendous amount of interest in and usage of Python across a wide spectrum of com

Speaking as a commercial Python developer, I can honestly say that there is a tremendous amount of interest in and usage of Python across a wide spectrum of commercial and enterprise applications. This is everything from realtime high-frequency trading to oil exploration to mixing toothpaste to processing Hubble images to manufacturing SATA and PCIe driver chips. The very active, very professional community around the language, combined with the ease of integration with legacy codebases in FORTRAN, C, and C++ makes it very popular in the commercial sector. Consequently, there are numerous institutions and companies that have developers spending time on improving the langauge and its underlying libraries. Guido is a sharp guy and is sensitive to all the places where Python is used, and he takes these into consideration when approving or disallowing language changes. This understanding and the overall process makes the language "mature". On the flip side, I am not aware of any significant impact of Ruby in commercial development that is not web-driven. When we bid on projects and talk to prospective customers, we're typically making a case against Java and C++. I can't recall a single instance where someone seriously asked us about Ruby. (We've had more inquiries about KDB and K, that abomination of a language.) So, just my $.02 as a scientific software developer.