Instant startup times are really nice. You definitely notice the difference. It also means that you can be a bit lazier when creating wrappers around those tools (running 1000's of times isn't a problem when the startup is 1ms, but would be a problem with 40ms of startup time).

Distribution can also be a lot easier if you don't need to care about the user having a specific version of Python or specific packages available.

What makes python very slow start up has little to do with the GC though. Actually, a GC program for a short-lived program such as most CLI tools can be the fastest option since you could disable the GC and let the OS dealloc all memory at exit.

Fair. Python was probably a bad example. I think we need more languages like Go because even with its downsides, for projects that don’t need explicit memory control I’m picking it over rust and zig every time