You should try Go. It writes quickly like Python, but it's much simpler and more performant. It's also statically typed so you don't have to search all over to figure out the real type of a parameter, etc. Finally, everything compiles into a single static binary, so you don't have to worry about having the right version of an interpreter or libraries installed on your system--just pass around the binary and run it! I also came to it by way of C++ and found it nice that any type can be passed around by value or by reference, unlike Python, Java, etc where everything is a reference and it's hard to tell what (if anything) will be stack allocated. http://tour.golang.org