[Mawr]

I don't think anyone aware of this thinks it's a good tradeoff.

The more interesting question is why the tradeoff was made in the first place.

The answer is, it's relatively easy for us to see and understand the impact of these design decisions because we've been able to see their outcomes over the last 20+ years of Python. Hindsight is 20/20.

Remember that Python was released in 1991, before even Java. What we knew about programming back then vs what we know now is very different.

Oh and also, these tradeoffs are very hard to make in general. A design decision that you may think is irrelevant at the time may in fact end up being crucial to performance later on, but by that point the design is set in stone due to backwards compatibility.