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> C++ and Java developers expect to be able to run a program at full speed (or very close to it) under a debugger.

I haven't worked in Java too much, but in C++ I don't remember having this expectation

Java programs might not run in debugger very well either, depends on where and how you place breakpoints.

However I'd be glad if profilers (and notably memory profiler) would slow down a Python program only as much as valgrind does C.

I noticed that java with a connected debugger can be very fast even with breakpoints, but stepping over can be very slow. Which is a big weird, since "step over" is basically just putting the breakpoint on the next line.

Think of it more as: It's still possible, painful as it may sometimes be, to debug optimised C++ code running at full speed.

Well, yes, but it quickly gets as painful as debugging raw assembly with almost no symbol informations. You might get lucky from time to time and get some debug info available for some variables, but in hot loops and highly inlined code, you're back to raw assembly. Doable for sure, but 100x slower to figure out anything compared to non-optimized code.

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