C/C++ are low level languages. C++ has object orientation, but talking to C++ from Zend is very tedious (if I am not mistaken, you essentially end up passing objects as void pointers).

Python, Ruby, Perl, Java, Erlang, allow you to do systems-programming (i.e. writing daemons, doing threading and high performance event driven/non-blocking I/O) while still retaining high-level features such as reflection/meta programming.