Python's rise can be attributed to its early establishment as a general-purpose language with a focus on readability and a clear "Pythonic" way of doing things, unlike Perl. Its extensive libraries, like Numpy and Pandas, made it indispensable for data science, thus becoming the preferred choice in that sphere. Ruby, despite being user-friendly and powerful with Rails, couldn't compete with the versatility and broad adoption of Python, especially as web development shifted towards JavaScript frameworks like Node.js and React.