> Python is not, in any way, revolutionary. Several contemporaries exist with similar design constraints.
I think it was revolutionary in its own terms. For example, list slicing was revolutionary and it reduced many lookups to the minimum. Sure, it was implemented by other (not so popular) programming languages before but not in addition of many other features like easy interpreter embedding, good reflection/metaprogramming, straightforward bindings, unicode, etc.
Now in 2018 all these things are discussable and we can objectively criticize eternal issues (e.g. interpreter lock) but Python showed that you can write applications in a concise way without a lot of boilerplate. I would love to see a programming language that progresses from this point.
I think this is precisely what I said. If you discount any other competitor and what they did, Python was revolutionary within itself. Which is not all bad, it means the language has had progress. But it's a very narrow metric.
I think it was revolutionary in its own terms. For example, list slicing was revolutionary and it reduced many lookups to the minimum. Sure, it was implemented by other (not so popular) programming languages before but not in addition of many other features like easy interpreter embedding, good reflection/metaprogramming, straightforward bindings, unicode, etc.
Now in 2018 all these things are discussable and we can objectively criticize eternal issues (e.g. interpreter lock) but Python showed that you can write applications in a concise way without a lot of boilerplate. I would love to see a programming language that progresses from this point.