[FpUser]

I assume you are >35, you grew up at a time that people were think about the performance more than the readability, that was the bottleneck back then.

From the old fart: conflating performance conscious code with the lack of readability is plain wrong.

[pfeller]

When you see performance factors beyond 1000 on some algorithms between python/ruby and C/C++ and you see python being deployed everywhere, no wonder where all the earth's energy is going. At least these are promoted by silicon vendors.

Edit: I cannot blame too much though, its generating comfortable revenue for me as a consultant. Still, having to deploy nginx/haproxy to load balance python servers for only 200 requests per second each makes me pray for our planet, but it grants me the money the customer saved on developers ;-)

[FpUser]

I do some consulting as well. Same thing, total python on back-end servers. All young programmers, some calling themselves pythonistas. Many actively support green movement to the point of wearing "green" labeled clothes. I loved their reaction when I showed them a table outlining energy consumption of python vs C (75 times difference).

[mixmastamyk]

Most services are IO bound, not CPU bound. For the later, there is Cython and C, as you mention.