Why is python so hyped?

[helios]

You must not remember it very well then, when KDE and GNOME both dropped backwards compat there was a HUGE up-roar with Linux distributions either dropping them completely or not updating the versions for a long time because of the lack of libraries and software.

You must not understand irony, then. I thought I had made it pretty obvious, too.

This statement shows an ignorance of real-world development. You cannot release a new version of software and just "not support" the previous version.

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying Python 2 shouldn't be supported. I'm saying the situation should never have arisen.
Especially in a dynamic language where you can't know if a name is defined until you've tried to use it. But that's a story for another day.

[rapidcoder]

A side note: never learn Python after learning Scala. Because it feels like learning Basic after learning C++ or Java.

Personally, the only thing I really liked about Python was its whitespace-controlled syntax and lack of curly braces, which makes code look pretty nice (contrary to many opinions of people not-using python). It is really nice, and once you set up your editors correctly, it is never a problem.

But all the rest...
1. lack of static typing - I'd really like to know how this can be ever treated as an advantage; maybe compared to Java it gives some additional flexibility, but not compared to languages with type inference and pattern matching
2. inferior documentation
3. inconsistent ways of doing things - I could never figure out why some things are just global library functions like len() but some others are just methods on an object
4. little underpowered I/O utilities, at least compared to Java's
5. functional programming utilities feel very tacked on and afterthought
6. funny method definition syntax with explicit self (but I got used to it; it is just different than in every other language for no real reason)
7. syntax is quite complex once you get past the basic stuff like loops, conditions and functions; e.g. special syntax for array accesses, special syntax for list comprehensions, special syntax for comparison with None, special syntax for... fortunately it is still far from Perl.
8. poor IDE support, although JetBrains is doing its best with PyCharm, it is nowhere near that level of support you gain from a beta version of their Scala plugin two years ago...
9. lack of many powerful features I had in Scala: pattern matching, implicits, higher-order types, partial function application / currying, parallel collections, huge number of data structures at hand, etc.
10. it is damn slow, but in that project I was using it for, it didn't matter

[moorecm]

Just to chime in, I also hear a lot of people promoting Python around the office. I've recently been doing maintenance on a fairly small application (in Python 2.7) and it is a mess... Admittedly, the authors had a lot to do with that.

Some of the syntax makes a lot of sense and some of it is a bit obscure, IMO. The primary benefit that I see is a rich library support.

Personally, I'd use something else. If I need the library support, I'd probably go with Java. If I need to get some reporting/formatting/text-processing done "quick and dirty", I'd use Perl.