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Because it's just a library.

I don't think it's as easy or prudent to hop between languages as you make it out to be. To turn it around, if you can extend your language with features, why would you introduce a whole new language dependency into your project if you don't have to?




I think it's better to introduce a language dependency instead of extending an existing language with new features if those new features won't be a natural fit for your existing language.

For example, GADTs are natural in strongly+statically-typed languages (e.g., Haskell) because they're typically used to write code which you want the compiler to check for correctness (as much as possible); if your existing language is a dynamically-typed language (in this case, Python) the interpreter may still be able to enforce type-safety at run-time, but you'll lose the more practical benefit of knowing at compile-time that the code won't break. Adding a feature like this to Python would add additional complexity to the language while also taking a significant amount of time before it was supported well-enough across the entire range of Python environments to really catch on; and for all that hassle -- which you're going through just to stay within Python, remember -- you're receiving minimal gain, and it's likely to cause more headaches in the long term than it solves.

FWIW, I'm actually quite a big fan of Python, even though I don't use it much; in particular, the Python open-source community is excellent. I just think that languages should focus on solving whatever problem they solve -- it's easy to get carried away with adding "more power" and end up ruining something which already worked well for a particular problem.




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