Take the 2-minute tour ×  There's a quote from a PyCon 2011 talk
that goes:  At least in our shop (Argonne National Laboratory)
we have three accepted languages for scientific computing. In
this order they are C/C++, Fortran in all its dialects, and
Python. You’ll notice the absolute and total lack of Ruby, Perl,
Java.  It was in the more general context of high-performance
computing. Granted the quote is only from one shop, but another
question about languages for HPC, also lists Python as one to
learn (and not Ruby).  Now, I can understand C/C++ and Fortran
being used in that problem-space (and Perl/Java not being used).
But I'm surprised that there would be a major difference in
Python and Ruby use for HPC, given that they are fairly similar.
(Note - I'm a fan of Python, but have nothing against Ruby).  Is
there some specific reason why the one language took off? Is it
about the libraries available? Some specific language features?
The community? Or maybe just historical contigency, and it could
have gone