I heard that very argument about GCC. C++ without __attribute__ is not practical for embedded development therefore C++ for PLCs is what GCC does. And yet, the general consensus now is that C++ is ISO/IEC 14882, and what GCC does is just an implementation.
With Python, you don't even have to go "alternative" to use LLVM compiler infrastructure. You can use CPython + Numba and compile your kernels for both CPU and GPGPU on the go. Which is very practical.
Which is ironic, to compile a CUDA kernel in C++, you would have to use an alternative NVidia implementation of the language.