I don't think the goal is to "compete on speed", but I'm sure people wouldn't complain about their Python scripts running 15x faster on their 16 core CPU. And

I don't think the goal is to "compete on speed", but I'm sure people wouldn't complain about their Python scripts running 15x faster on their 16 core CPU. And it is also about flexibility. What I love about Python is the simplicity, and let's be honest, multiprocess anything but. Especially if you fall into one of the gotchas (unpickable data for example).