is probably the first thing that pops up when you search of python and tutorial, yet it reads like it is adressed at people that are looking for a way to augment their unix shell. This is not very helpful to most people. Thankfully, there are many alternatives, however it is bad that this is the first thing that pops up.
I am confused by the why is "X so slow" argument. Conceptually and practically, Python might be slower than native C code, but the tradeof lies in the relationship between runtime and "design"-time. It is a little slower, but it is faster to learn, read and write. Demands for "more performance" should be driven by actual numbers: How many people should your webservice serve in a second, minute? So far python has been fast enough for anything I wanted to do. For everything else there is numpy/scipy - fortran for the win!