"Smaller code" does not mean easier to understand. It just means less characters to read. Maybe those characters are heavily loaded with meaning, as in the case with meta programing. You might need twice as much time to _understand_ the Python Code vs. the Rust code. The Rust code might be easier to extend, etc. So this is all comes to trade-offs at the end. All this being said, I'm still a huge Python enthusiast.

Smaller code may also mean more entangled and more rigid design. But that is hard to tell from just the line count.