I'm frankly not that surprised. Most analytics work seems to be done with Python today and it's effectively the next best step up from Excel. It's not my favorite language, but it is fairly understandable.

Python also benefits from not being controlled by a large corporation, it is truly run and governed by an open source community.

Not surprised either. Very easy to pick up and get things done. However, I think for some of the use cases I have seen so far, sql can do the job just fine.