I don't think it's 'pathetic' at all; it's actually a massive engineering win. Python’s dominance in 2026 isn't about the language's raw speed, but its role as the ultimate 'glue logic.' We use Python for its expressive simplicity at the top level, while all the heavy lifting happens in C++, Rust, or CUDA under the hood.
In the age of AI, the bottleneck isn't execution time—it's iteration time. If a 'generic' scripting language allows a researcher to test ten hypotheses in the time it takes to debug one memory leak in a lower-level language, then that simplicity is exactly why it's the center of the world.
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I don't think it's 'pathetic' at all; it's actually a massive engineering win. Python’s dominance in 2026 isn't about the language's raw speed, but its role as the ultimate 'glue logic.' We use Python for its expressive simplicity at the top level, while all the heavy lifting happens in C++, Rust, or CUDA under the hood. In the age of AI, the bottleneck isn't execution time—it's iteration time. If a 'generic' scripting language allows a researcher to test ten hypotheses in the time it takes to debug one memory leak in a lower-level language, then that simplicity is exactly why it's the center of the world.