A few people have written with a little bit a of angst about the future of the Python programming language. I have felt this too. I wonder if it is because its big brother Perl, which it used to tease, is no longer around to tease.

What does success mean for a programming language though? Python has a very large developer base. Python for Windows itself has a million downloads per month and that's arguably not its core platform. There are perhaps billions of beneficiaries of Python code. Isn't that enough?

Perhaps not. There is something intangible about momentum. Maybe it is hard to see whether there is sufficient momentum to push through these challenges:

1. Operating systems are likely to move to HTML5 as their native environment for user-facing applications.

2. Python is no longer sexy on the server.

3. Lua is easier to embed and runs faster.

4. Python has been left out of mobile.

5. Other things, such as Clojure and Go, are newer and shinier.