What's the earliest you could have predicted that Python would be one of the top five programming languages? (Round to nearest year.)
I’m going to say 1995, but hear me out. (1) We already knew that attacking problems with computers, in a sort of ad hoc fashion, was going to be a big deal. *All* problems had a computational side, not just a special class.
(2) We knew that domain knowledge mattered—that the more the “ordinary” practitioner had direct access, the greater the payoff. No separate “computer group”.
(3) Moore’s law was holding up. Interpreted languages are much easier to work with, but they’re also much, much slower. It would take another decade until Python could attack a standard “real” problem, but it would come.
Predicting that Python (and similar) would dominate is this *much* easier than predicting that 90s neural nets would pay off in C21.
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