What you consider as verbosity in Python might the 'being explicit' philosophy of Python. For example though the succinctness of crafting a Perl regular express

What you consider as verbosity in Python might the 'being explicit' philosophy of Python. For example though the succinctness of crafting a Perl regular expression is alluring , I have found writing regular expression the Python way and referring the results in an explicit manner helpful in keeping the code readable. The gain you mention (though the exponential part is debatable) is not limited to Perl alone[1]. Scripting languages provide a substantial gain in developer productivity freeing them from things like typing, faster debug cycle etc. and that gain is not limited to using Perl alone. Check Table 1. in the reference I have mentioned, which compares the time it took to develop the same application in Tcl with time it took for development using in C/C++/Java. I think similar gain can be seen when one uses other scripting languages (say Python or Perl). 1. www.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/scripting.pdf