My standard response when someone asks me how I deal with Python being such a slow language is that Python is by far the fastest to write, cleanest, more maintainable programming language I know, and that a bit of a runtime performance penalty is a small price to pay when I'm rewarded with significant productivity gains. I rarely feel Python slows me down, and on the other side I constantly marvel at how fast I code with it compared to other languages. This weekend I was supposed to attend PyCon...