That's hardly surprising, Minimalistic tools haven't been able to survive for a long time.

Problems change, programmers needs change. What was not necessary yesterday, might be very important today. You will have no option but to keep adding on things as they are needed.

I started out with vi, then found out I was better off using emacs. Its rather better to use something designed to be big from the scratch, than to be using some thing invented to be minimal but bloated later just to compete with others.

Python is just undergoing the natural trend.