The reason anyone thinks it's slow is that in the real world, people still ship* Python scripts/projects that don't offload their performance-sensitive code to faster solutions.

Acting as glue isn't unknown to anyone looking into Python either, problem being there are multiple different solutions that each have their own benefits/drawbacks that will differ based on the use-case. Fine if you can lean on an existing library, more complicated if you actually need to write the performance-sensitive code.

Similar to @Chais@sh.itjust.works, plus newer compile-to-C/C++/JS languages offer a lot of what Python does (glue, whitespace, style) plus more stuff like UFCS.

My preference is nim-lang, it has stuff like for i in 1..17: (or something like
for h in 0.uint8..<height:. Typing is a thing but doesn't stop me, so either not a big hurdle or there's something with my brain that makes it fine despite issues with other languages/styles). Nimscript is an option, and I like Clang with opt:size for an efficient testing option (Bellard's TCC was an even better option for quick iteration in the past, not exactly supported now (as of 2023) though. Might work for other languages).

* my last experience with this was a piano thing (soundfonts for MIDI keyboard) that had choppy audio when played too quickly and would crash my Raspberry Pi 2B. The issue was closed as not planned.