[fragmede]

> In the former, it's part of basic language knowledge to understand how virtual methods are implemented

Since when? While Hex-ray's IDA let me dig into exactly how vtables work, it's not like you even need to have heard of how vtables before you can stick the word 'virtual' in the right place for you code to do what you want.

Similarly: If you're a long-time Python programmer, and have never looked into the internals, it's a good exercise. There's a (in CPython) CALL_FUNCTION instruction that PyEval_EvalFrameEx (in Python/ceval.c) dispatches that (and, well, all) opcodes. And... and... It's not magic, yes it does work, I don't know if you care, I certainly do.

If you want to be ignorant of the lower-levels of code, Python certainly makes it easier (strings are an easy-to-use built-in language feature? madness!), but let's not pretend every programmer who has ever touched C++ has heard of vtables.