Functional is my preferred paradigm. I do a lot of work in Python, too, and often find myself rubbing up against Python's less-than-complete support for FP. That being said, I am quite happy that Python does not have most of this stuff. It's good for a language to pick a paradigm, and stick to it. Trying to be all things to all people is the best way to grow a good language into a great big mushball.
Python, for its part, is, first and foremost, a procedural imperative language. With some facilities for object-oriented and functional programming, yes, but its heart and soul are procedural. And, unless we're all ready for a backward-compatibility crisis that's even worse than 2->3, that's not changing any time soon. And that's fine. Despite it not being a paradigm that anyone has considered particularly sexy for a good 30 years now, for the problem domains where Python is most successful, procedural programming is a perfectly good way to work. Perhaps even the ideal one.
If that means that Python doesn't remain one of the world's most popular languages for the foreseeable future, that's fine. I'd honestly rather switch to a new clean language every so often than get stuck permanently on a Frankenstein's monster cobbled together from all of the most popular programming language design trends from every decade of my life. That said, I don't think that Python's existential peril is quite as great as you're making it out to be. It's got a truly impressive amount of staying power. I've spent a good two decades now watching this language repeatedly survive its own death.
Python, for its part, is, first and foremost, a procedural imperative language. With some facilities for object-oriented and functional programming, yes, but its heart and soul are procedural. And, unless we're all ready for a backward-compatibility crisis that's even worse than 2->3, that's not changing any time soon. And that's fine. Despite it not being a paradigm that anyone has considered particularly sexy for a good 30 years now, for the problem domains where Python is most successful, procedural programming is a perfectly good way to work. Perhaps even the ideal one.
If that means that Python doesn't remain one of the world's most popular languages for the foreseeable future, that's fine. I'd honestly rather switch to a new clean language every so often than get stuck permanently on a Frankenstein's monster cobbled together from all of the most popular programming language design trends from every decade of my life. That said, I don't think that Python's existential peril is quite as great as you're making it out to be. It's got a truly impressive amount of staying power. I've spent a good two decades now watching this language repeatedly survive its own death.