I've had a similar situation with Kotlin. I've always been a java developer, and I enjoy using it, but even with the newer features it's just...slow.

When I had to script things I chose JavaScript (native JavaScript) since it's way faster to iterate, but I've always missed the static typing (I also know python, but I honestly prefer JavaScript)

Until I learned Kotlin. It's been a blast to use, incredible common libraries, streams everywhere, nulls that you can use without issues...I just love it (so much in fact that I'm in the process of switching project from java to Kotlin).

When I need to do scripts, like for the advent-of-code, I choose Kotlin.