I'll be the counter example. PhD in life sciences, but I've also been programming since I was a teen. Rust is by far my most used language for both general fun projects and in my role as a programmer in the life-sciences. Python is OK for ad-hoc analyses, but I cannot stand to use dynamically typed languages for anything "real" given how much difficulty dynamic typing imposes on reading and understanding code.
Sure, but by your description, you aren't really the people I'm describing. If you've been doing this since you were a teen, you're a "Real Programmer". My point was that people who have to do this as item 7 of 10 things in their job description are very much less likely to learn something like Rust than Python. That is undeniably a bigger lift to a non-programmer. Python's success in the sciences is in large part due to how good a fit as a language it is for part-time occasional programmers.
I like all kinds of languages, but the only ones I would encourage my partner to bother with as tools for her science work would be R and Python.
