Yeah, I agree on that. In the nineties, basically the only general purpose language was C, with C++ growing in pains (and then extending uncontrollably) and Java promising to get better but having its own issues at that time. So people who needed to get their job done (efficiently) just used C, like Torvalds.

At that time, this new Python language was a curiosity. It was nice that you could easily replace dozens of C code with one line of Python but everybody was aware it's too slow. However, this window shifted with time. The perceptions of "fast" and "slow" changed for various reasons such as network delays so Python became acceptable in many areas it would be dismissed otherwise. To the point it became the no. 1 language now.

But we are not in the 2000s anymore. We do have powerful, batteries-included languages that are faster than Python. So I expect with time, large parts will be rewritten. However, the area related to scientific computing will stay with Python, just like Fortran programs continue to be used today.

I don’t know when you last tested the start-up time, but we significantly improved it in HTTPie CLI 3.0 [0]. Now it’s still slower by ~0.1s.

    $ time http --version
    3.2.2

    real 0m0.113s
    user 0m0.087s
    sys 0m0.020s



    $ time xh --version
    xh 0.18.0
    -native-tls +rustls

    real 0m0.007s
    user 0m0.002s
    sys 0m0.002s

[0] https://httpie.io/blog/httpie-3.0.0#speed-ups

Python is not a good comparison. It's improving but its runtime system is very slow compared to a modern concurrent GCed system.