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And if you really need to have a piece of your code execute really quickly, you can just make C extension that python can easily invoke.

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Python's support for this is awesome, but there is a gap: you lost cross platform. You now have to figure out how to make it compile on every platform that anybody could every possibly want to run it on, including ones not yet invented in the future ... Jython / Java (or other JVM languages) are quite a nice option in that space.

Of course you loose a little platform independence, but that is something you don't have anyway when you program in C++ or that kind. Also you get rather rich support for makefiles that are cross platform. I had no problems till now with C code I wrote that integrates into the Python environment. When you don't need OS specifics and have knowledge how to implement things CPU independent (given a common >=32bit architecture) in C, you will have little to no trouble at all.

Also one little hint: Use Cython for enhancements. Cython is great for implementing small enhancements when you don't want to hassle with refcounts and the normal Python API. Also your enhancements are automatically compatible to Python 2 + Python 3. You can also call C functions from Cython very easily for full speed. Cython is really great, when you don't need to optimize to the last nanosecond.

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