This the problem with anecdotal data. In the past I have spent years mostly developing and implementing new algorithms, where appropriate using graph representations. I've also spent months at a stretch on low level performance tuning.

I don't find python beautiful; it's a functional glue language and I don't hate it. It has an ok REPL and some quirky design choices. It has a decent C interop which makes it practical. What makes it useful for data analysis is the large number of packages and staggering number of person-years that have been put into them. The greater python community is great. The language is ok. Together that's pretty useful.