You're at least 50x more productive at prototyping Python than in C. I am too. I know some veteran C++ programmers who are far more productive at prototyping in C++ than in Python, though. And even for myself (who is a huge fan of dynamic programming languages), there are some tasks - eg. MapReduces - where I'll prototype in C++ rather than Python because the integration with the framework and faster performance outweighs any gain from language constructs.