Reasons to choose Python over C++?

[volcano63]

Depends a lot on the script. A true script does little by itself, it mostly calls existing utilities which have been usually written by people who know their stuff and will be much faster than equivalent Python code.

While e.g., grep on itself will most probably be much faster than equivalent implemented in Python, each of those utilities must be loaded into memory, in many cases - more than one - when you pipe output of one into another. Multiple pipe buffer management is - intuitively - resource-consuming too.

And - speaking of memory - python 2.7.6 interpreter "weighed" just 20K, echo of Ubuntu - ab. 4 years ago, not sure about version - 50K.

Nevertheless, my evaluation is that the worst performance-affecting perp was output redirection. Appending to output file on each step meant re-opening and seeking its end on every loop iteration - in Python implementation, the output file was opened once.

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You know, Java now has FP and most languages now support FP in some form or other. 

If done right, FP can be more natural, compact and less bug-prone to modifications than the imperative style.

1. Who wants to learn Java   (just kidding, but seriously - I don't)
   
2. Python supports quite a few FP element constructs - like map, filter, lambda, comprehensions, generators, reduce
   
3. Pure FP is not always the best tool for the task - and the creator of Scala, Martin Odersky,
   also the author of this excellent course, is smart and humble enough to state just that
   

Actually, previous knowledge of Python helped me in the mentioned-above Scala course...