I don't always code Python, but when I do I don't complain much about these issues :-). I think everything you've mentioned is pretty defensible, particularly

I don't always code Python, but when I do I don't complain much about these issues :-). I think everything you've mentioned is pretty defensible, particularly the readability bit. Honestly if a language does everything reasonably well, I think that's pretty awesome. I'm also curious what magical dynamically-typed interpreted language you prefer. The only mainstream general-purpose alternatives I can think of are Ruby (which is basically alternate-universe python) and Perl (which seems strictly worse), or are you into JavaScript or APL-derivatives? It's all a matter of taste of course, but I could probably write a much more vicious rant against any of those.