I am a web developer and usually use PHP, JavaScript or MySQL.
I have heard lot about Python. But I have no idea where it is used and why it is used.
Just like PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, .NET are used to build websites, and C, C++, Java are used to build software or desktop apps.
Where does Python fit in this?
What can Python do that these other languages cannot do?
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Many websites uses Django or Zope/Plone web framework, these are written in Python.
Python is used a lot for writing system administration software, usually when bash scripts (shell script) isn't up to the job, but going C/C++ is an overkill. This is also the spectrum where perl, awk, etc stands. Gentoo's emerge/portage is one example. Mercurial/HG is a distributed version control system (DVCS) written in python.
Many desktop applications are also written in Python. The original Bittorrent was written in python.
Python is also used as the scripting languages for GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, OpenOffice, etc. Python allows advanced users to write plugins and access advanced functionalities that cannot typically be used through a GUI.
Python is also great for scientific programs such as statistical models or physics sims. I've done monte-carlo programs and, using the VISUAL module, a 3D simulation of the Apollo mission.
Python is used for developing sites. It's more highlevel than php. Python is used for linux dekstop applications. For example, the most of Ubuntu configurations utilites are pythonic.
All the languages you've mentioned are Turing Complete, so in theory there is nothing one can do and another can't. In practice of course, there are differences, especially in productivity and efficiency. Compared to C, C++ and Java, which are static typed, Python is a dynamic language and can help you write the same code in significantly fewer lines. Python has a moto "batteries included", which means that the standard library offers all the things needed to build a complex application. Other languages would need external libraries for this. On top of this, since Python is an old and mature language (older than Java), many external libraries (for game development and scientific calculations just to mention a few) have been evolved. So Python can be used to program desktop applications and in fact in some cases more efficiently than other traditional languages.
Python is also a scripting language. This means that you can easily and quickly write scripts and simple tests with it.
More recently python is also used for web frameworks. Since there is a big code base and many python programmers, this was a logical thing to do. These web frameworks follow the practice mainly introduced by Ruby on Rails.
With a few exceptions, Python is used pretty much wherever a programmer who knows Python wants to focus on solving a problem instead of struggling with implementation details. You'll find it in games, web applications, network servers, scientific computing, media tools, application scripting, etc. (There's a somewhat old list of some organizations that use it here.) People who know it well tend to love it because it strikes a very rare balance of conciseness and clarity, and (perhaps to a lesser extent) because it has a rich set of useful libraries.
Some places where Python isn't used as much:
Your categorization is not correct:
php, asp and ColdFusion are mostly used for websites, that is correct, but .net is definetly much more than asp you can build desktop applications, too (Paint.NET). I don't know about ColdFusion, but PHP can also be used to write desktop applications.
On the other hand C,C++ are not really often used for web programming, But it can be used for web programming (cgit). Java is definetly a language to develop web applications (spring and much more).
Python is a scripting language like PHP, Perl, Ruby and so much more. It can be used for web programming (django, Zope, Google App Engine, and much more). But it also can be used for desktop applications (Blender 3D, or even for games pygame).
Python can also be translated into binary code like java.
Source: Stackoverflow.com