Yeah the OP here listed a bunch of Python stuff that all ends up shelling out to C++. C++ is rich enough, period, but people find it unpleasant to work in (which I agree with).

It's not about "richness," it's about giving a language ecosystem for people who don't really want to do the messy, low-level parts of software, and which can encapsulate the performance-critical parts with easy glue

I mean, you’ve basically described why people use Python, it’s a way to use C/C++ without having to write it.

And ill take that reason every single day. I could spend days or more working out particular issues in C++, or I could use a much nicer to use glue language with a great ecosystem and a huge community driving it and get the same task done in minutes to hours.

I tried to statically link DuckDB to one of my C++ project earlier this year and it took me 3 days to have something working on Windows/Linux/MacOS (just to be able to use the dependency)

While I'm not a C++ expert, doing the same in Python is just one pip install away, so yeah both "richness" and "ease of use" of the ecosystem matters

You made my point for me: DuckDB is already in C++ (so C++ is rich enough), but hard to glue with other pieces, and you don't want to put in that effort, so you use Python.

Ever tried to write a web scraper in c++?

Every company that does web scraping has one. My point is that it's not about RICHNESS (what can be done) because everything mentioned by the OP is already done in C++.