It's easy to start learning on, or prototype with, and then sometimes momentum just keeps it going. Also it may not really be the best at anything, but it's "pretty good" at just about everything. It's kind of like vanilla ice cream.

Packaging can be irritating although uv takes the sting out a bit.

You are right that outside of verbosity, once you get used to the syntax of a language, the value of one over the other kind of fades.