It’s also part of why Python has been so successful in many domains. I was there for Python’s takeover of the data space, and I got quite used to porting things from Java (static, JIT, decent at multithreading) to Python (dynamic, interpreted, GIL) and realizing substantial performance improvements in the process.

It’s kind of wild how nice Python’s C extension system, which enables basically zero cost interop with native code, is for certain purposes. It supports a situation that’s comparable to the games industry’s tradition of putting a Lua or Lisp tip on top of a C++ iceberg.