+1 for lots of interesting points. Regarding the benefits of Python, I definitely agree. For writing my own scripts, small utilities, one-off data processing jo

+1 for lots of interesting points. Regarding the benefits of Python, I definitely agree. For writing my own scripts, small utilities, one-off data processing jobs (turn this CSV file into a big JSON object, etc.) and all the little, daily automation tasks I run into, it's hard to beat Python, and I'm usually surprised at how fast it is. I don't plan to give it up as my "everyday carry" Swiss Army Knife language. For writing apps for the server, where it will keep running 24/7 serving thousands of people, I think I'm okay with giving up what you estimate to be about a factor of two in productivity for the performance gain, but I wouldn't give up the order of magnitude productivity difference needed for C++ to gain another factor of two in performance (vs Go) unless my code had to serve millions. I don't see that happening anytime soon, so Go as the new, improved Java (I see it that way, too) still seems like the sweet spot for server coding for me.