The really annoying thing is is that you can quite happily write shorter code in D than in Python and have it run as fast as C++. One of the reasons D compiles so fast is because of this - the compiler isn't even specifically optimized for speed.

Everyone seems to think that writing expressive code is slow, when really it's because Python is slow and C++ is a lumbering behemoth.

Python isn't even a high-level language, think about it - it's higher level than C but the capability it has for abstraction it gives you is really just interpreted C with classes.