It allowed me to write Cython for only small pieces of programs for which there is profiling evidence of a performance bottleneck. Cython is a slight superset

It allowed me to write Cython for only small pieces of programs for which there is profiling evidence of a performance bottleneck. Cython is a slight superset of Python that compiles to heavily optimized C or C++. So it is extremely easy to write & autogenerate Python bindings to your own C extension modules. The difference is that it frees you to write Python (much easier to write & maintain) for everything, and only care about compiling down for speed in a few isolated places. Contrasted with writing everything in C/C++, this is a big advantage.