> (because C gives you more time before you run into scalability problems)
That's true for implementing the same algorithm. But C is so hard to get right, that you will probably be able to use only the simplest algorithms in your C code. (Or the other way round, you can scale by using better algorithms in a higher level language like Python much easier and longer than you can do so in C.)
That makes the comparison more complicated. Also Python (and most other languages) work quite nicely together with C. So you can start with Python and replace the hotspots with C. (And be sure to identify the hotspots with a profiler---lest you guess wrong.)
That's true for implementing the same algorithm. But C is so hard to get right, that you will probably be able to use only the simplest algorithms in your C code. (Or the other way round, you can scale by using better algorithms in a higher level language like Python much easier and longer than you can do so in C.)
That makes the comparison more complicated. Also Python (and most other languages) work quite nicely together with C. So you can start with Python and replace the hotspots with C. (And be sure to identify the hotspots with a profiler---lest you guess wrong.)