It doesn't have to be production. Maybe it's for a research project where you just need the extra performance. Everything has a cost. This may not be ideal but

It doesn't have to be production. Maybe it's for a research project where you just need the extra performance. Everything has a cost. This may not be ideal but learning to do C properly as an experienced Python dev will have a time cost as well. This may just be the best way to get from A to B. I remember when I did a one-off project with a PIC microcontroller. I only had an assembler and I spent 2 days getting nowhere. Then i found a C compiler and I had the whole thing running in 2 hours. The compiler turned out to much more efficient in speed as well as code size than my hand-written assembler.