But cutting down a tree with a hand operated saw (even if it can be done, see the time of logging before chainsaws) is a painful operation, and making very straight cuts without the aid of a table saw and a guide is similar.
APL is a powertool, basic is a hand-tool.
This is of course focusing on specific aspects of Python, and not Python as a whole, which I think is a very capable language (if not my cup of tea).
Fairly quickly, in my experience. Muddled data types, all kinds of conversion rules and non-obvious trickery required to get the job done.
Ok, you do get the job done but it almost never feels clean.
Or maybe you only appear to be extremely gifted because of the tools that you use but that's a hard one to prove without a large and preferably controlled experiment.
This fits my experience, and I've brought up that point many times here. There's a trade-off languages make in accessibility that often reduces usability for experts. If everyone is already an expert, or there's some other compelling reason people will use your language (e.g. C and UNIX), then you can get away with being less accessible (and C isn't accessible, it just seems that way to some because we all either learn it or some language that shares many features with it).
On one end of the spectrum, you have BASIC/Visual Basic, where learning the basics is easy and accomplishing simple things is simple, but accomplishing hard things is hampered by some of those same features that promote accessibility, and experts feel constrained. Adoption is high though, because people feel productive quickly.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have APL and it's ilk, which are fairly inaccessible to novices and require a lot of time to become fluent in. After you've spent that time, easy things are easy, and hard things are also relatively easy (within bounds of the domain you are targeting).
I come to this from Perl, which is interesting in that it's actually situated on both ends of the spectrum. It's got a very accessible syntax (except for a few well known warts) that makes people familiar with Algol like languages able to use it for simple things easily, and without grasping some of the fundamental aspects of the language (context). Unfortunately, without continuing to learn those fundamental Perl concepts, they will run up against what seem like very odd and annoying design choices which cause friction. That's not to explain away all Perl's design problems, because there are a few, but fundamentally what I see is a lot of people that really haven't spent the time to really understand the language, and so speak from a place of misunderstanding.
This has actually always made me want to learn APL. I'm interested in learning languages that have a somewhat high learning curve, to see how well it pays of in the end. I suspect it pays off quite well.