I believe SQL is "the most deployed programming environment family in human history". SQLite is seemingly everywhere.
Your second paragraph does not follow from the first. It could instead be that HN commenters are poor at this sort of analysis, or that people in general are poor at this sort of analysis.
What were the contemporaries with similar design constraints? I started looking at Python in 1995, and the major alternatives were Perl and Tcl. I don't remember anything close than those to Python.
I agree that Python is not revolutionary. I don't agree with your statement "avoiding any other aspect of programming". Van Rossum's ABC experience strongly influenced his ideas in how programming should be accessible to non-professional programmers, and that type of design is certainly an aspect of programming, though often overlooked.
I really don't understand "forcing it on more and more people." In some sense it's true - Python is a widely used teaching language, and as such the teachers are forcing ever more students to learn it; Python is the de facto required language for a number of fields, so again people are 'forced' to use it because their tools are often in Python.
But I don't think that's the type of force you mean?
You'll need to define some terms here. What is a "programming environment family"? Does BASIC in its various forms count? That includes Visual Basic and VBA.
Do people need to use it, or could it just be sitting there, like BASICA.EXE on an old MS-DOS distribution?
For that matter, the DOS shell is still hanging on, and it's a programming environment.
Most people use browsers on a smart phone or pad, with (as I understand it) no access to a programming environment.
I think that BASIC might actually be the dark horse I haven't considered here! Nice! I wonder if the fact that it isn't shipped on the other platforms evens that out though.
I just pulled out my surface book and Basic doesn't seem to be on my command line. I wonder if that's unique.
> SQLite is not a server.
Did I imply it was? SQLite is not a programming environment when shipped, either. An SQL server with a sufficiently large editor buffer might be able to squeak by as one.
Your second paragraph does not follow from the first. It could instead be that HN commenters are poor at this sort of analysis, or that people in general are poor at this sort of analysis.
What were the contemporaries with similar design constraints? I started looking at Python in 1995, and the major alternatives were Perl and Tcl. I don't remember anything close than those to Python.
I agree that Python is not revolutionary. I don't agree with your statement "avoiding any other aspect of programming". Van Rossum's ABC experience strongly influenced his ideas in how programming should be accessible to non-professional programmers, and that type of design is certainly an aspect of programming, though often overlooked.
I really don't understand "forcing it on more and more people." In some sense it's true - Python is a widely used teaching language, and as such the teachers are forcing ever more students to learn it; Python is the de facto required language for a number of fields, so again people are 'forced' to use it because their tools are often in Python.
But I don't think that's the type of force you mean?