Python

Advantages

• more lightweight VM
• more broad distribution
• “easier deployment”
• broader area of usage (DevOps, Science Computations, scripting, etc.)
• multiple popular VM implementations (CPython, PyPy, Jython, IronPython, etc.)
• mutable types

Disadvantages

• GIL in some implementations
• distributed computation more complicated
• mutable types
• monkey patching (not that it is not possible in Erlang)

Erlang and Elixir

Advantages

• very good distributed primitives
• immutable types
• simple syntax (in case of Erlang)
• powerful syntax (in case of Elixir)
• one VM can easily host different languages (Gleam, Elixir, Erlang, LFE, Joxa, Erlog, Luerl, etc.)
• error handling
• live updates

Disadvantages

• immutability
• without HiPE the performance is often worse than Python
• less familiar syntax (in case of Erlang)
• macros can be confusing (in case of Elixir)
• single popular VM implementation

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F07sbkfb,%2Fm%2F02p97,%2Fm%2F05z1_,%2Fm%2F07657k,%2Fm%2F060kv

Python has caught up to Java in terms of popularity. I suspect this is largely due to the fact that typically development in Python is faster than in Java. The fact that it tends to be slower at run-time tends to be a non-issue in most cases.

Python is also easier to learn for non-programmers (while still remaining in the imperative paradigm which many feel is more “natural”) - so it tends to be the weapon of choice of domain experts having to automate stuff (which is what programming essentially is). PHP became popular to “quickly whip up a web site” - Python has a similar appeal to “quickly whip up a program/script”.

(Having said that I suspect that if the JavaScript ecosystem didn’t exist to sink a lot of “developer hate”, Python would be receiving it instead.)

Aside: mozilla.org: Bedrock is a Django Project

Python has positioned itself in the cloud space as a “productive” language - i.e. faster development times than with C, C++, C#, Go, Java, Kotlin etc. (while at the same time not being JavaScript). The tradeoff is that you may require more computational resources at runtime than for a compiled language. Truth is - if your service is profitable enough most businesses don’t care that they could lower the operational cost because they view the gain of efficiency as marginal compared to the perceived cost of (re)development.

For example look at this case:

Summary: Ignore Python at your own peril (try to be a Language Agnostic).

I don’t think it makes that much sense to compare them as their are very different and they are also used differently. But both can be used for web development, that is for sure.

Python is really strong in the ML/AI stuff, mainly because most of the tooling is written in Python. Probably to keep it very beginner friendly.