Julia makes it pretty easy to write it in C if you want as well: http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.2/stdlib/base/#c-inte...
So that doesn't really give python a leg up over julia.
So that doesn't really give python a leg up over julia.
My standard approach is to use python to read in all my data, parse it, format it and beat it into the shape I want. Then, if I need the performance, I pass the data to a highly tuned C function for slowest number crunching parts. Then I take the data back from C and parse it, format it, summarize it and write it out to the file formats I want using python. C may be faster for number crunching, but python is much nicer for data handling, and there the performance difference is negligible.
There's work on interfacing with the C++ ABI, though. See Cpp.jl[0] and Clang.jl (whose C++ support is still a WIP)[1].