Perhaps Python doesn't need to be all things to all people, but it does need to be performant because people really shouldn't start projects with Python unless they are sure their project will never have performance requirements that Python can't deliver on, and they understand the limits of the "just rewrite it in C!" or "just use multiprocessing!" advice. Since it's generally unpredictable whether a project's performance requirements will exceed Python's ability or whether the eventual bottlenecks will be amenable to the aforementioned advice, using Python is generally a bad idea; however, many people don't understand the significant caveats to C/multiprocessing and therefore continue to happily start projects in Python (and paint themselves into corners that are expensive to back out of).