On the other hand, there were times when I had to get a piece of paper and draw diagrams to construct a twenty-line sequence of numpy calls, when the same would

On the other hand, there were times when I had to get a piece of paper and draw diagrams to construct a twenty-line sequence of numpy calls, when the same would have been achieved by several completely straightforward double (or triple) loops in C++. Writing the same loop in Python was out of question because it would be too slow. Performance grants you some freedom.