I think that languages like JavaScript or Python really shine is when you need to iterate quickly to understand your problem space. And where they suck is when

I think that languages like JavaScript or Python really shine is when you need to iterate quickly to understand your problem space. And where they suck is when you're trying to maintain some really prickly logic that someone "clever" wrote. But you can also get into the same kind of trouble in C++ or C. My favorite example of that is the system that a contractor wrote for us using bitwise logic and dual-nested loops that worked perfectly for function but each time we needed to make a change we needed at least 3 days to re-read the code for understanding. It passed all of our system-level and integration-level testing but if you put any one of us on the spot about how it actually worked we would have been screwed.