I feel that Python is more readable than most languages, and nice to look at it. I also like the magic functions. And whitespace never bothered me a second. I have the same amount of whitespace errors as I do forgetting a semicolon in PHP, which is infrequently. I don't know why you would consider JavaScript a better option with all its warts.
But you are right about the Python ecosystem. It is massive in the scientific and statistical computing. The other scripting languages outside of R aren't in the same ballpark in that domain.
> why you would consider JavaScript a better option with all its warts
I don't. Until recently there were so many ways to define a class that I was constantly forgetting how I did it last time. This is an order of magnitude worse than the split join thing. And all the wierd things we had to do to work around the callback hell. And the verbosity of function everywhere.
At least it is moving into the right direction with the last iterations of the language, which are mitigating those problems.
But you are right about the Python ecosystem. It is massive in the scientific and statistical computing. The other scripting languages outside of R aren't in the same ballpark in that domain.