Scripting language programmers don't seem to care about shitty code.
I see what you and schlumpf are saying in regards to shitty code, but Python is so tempting simply because its learning curve and average time to usability is so much lower. Having written Ruby and Objective-C, I could jump in on intermediate difficulty problems with Python in a few weeks where doing the same with C++ would likely take months. But then again, I may just be grossly overestimating.
How do you guys feel about libraries like Boost? Opinions seem to vary wildly.
On a sidenote, is C++ always lacking in terms of being self-explanatory? Most I've looked at takes much more than a quick glance to figure out exactly what a function is supposed to be doing.