Back when Python was started there was really C or C++ for optimized programs and scripting languages like Python and Perl. But since Python had the ability for C Extensions it allowed it to bypass those problems. Since Python was easy to learn both web developers and scientists to learn. Then financial organizations started to get interested and that’s really how Python cemented itself.

What exactly do you do with Python that slows you down ?

I worked on Python almost exclusively for maybe five years. Then I tried go. Each time I wrote a go program, I am giddy with excitement at how fast my first attempt is, scaling so smoothly with the number of cores. I also wrote a lot of fairly performant C in the 90s, so I know what computers can do in a second.

I still use Python for cases when dev time is more important than execution time (which is rarer now that I'm working adjacent to "big data") or when I'm doing things like writing python to close gaps in the various arrays of web apps provided for navigating the corporate work flow, and if I went as fast as a 64 core box let me, we'd have some outages in corp github or artifactory or the like, so I just do it one slow thing at a time on 1 core and wait for the results. Maybe multiprocessing with 10 process worker pool once I'm somewhat confident in the back end system I am talking to.

(edit: removed my normal email signoff)

You should try Nim, it's Python like but compiled so it's as far as C. These days if I want to script something (and don't need Python specific libraries like pandas) I use Nim.

He's already using Go. Does Nim provide any "killer features" that Go doesn't?

Well, good generics and sane error handling, for two examples.

Go recently got pretty decent generics. I'm with you on the error handling though. At least it's explicit. Go also has a plethora of really useful libraries, and that along with good editor and build tooling is probably the real draw of the language for me.

Version 1.0 generics, still better than nothing, though.

Okay you are using Python gluing two web services together which is what you deep acceptable that Python can do but can you just comment on the things that you don't use Python anymore due to it being slow?

Don't take this the wrong way but I think you could be more specific. Are you saying that similar to Go it should be just faster in general?

Scheme and Lisp already existed.