There is a good article about productivity of each programming language : http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/08/are-all-programming-languages-the-same.html. The analysis is based on the number of lines of code that are necessary to express the same idea under different languages.
Basically, on the average, scripting languages like Python can do with one line what a C program will have to do in 6 lines. Although this is a simple analysis that doesn't take into account other aspects like library availabilities, debuggability, compilation vs interpretation, performance, etc., it is a strong reminder that you can save a significant amount of time by being smart about the choice of the language.
In addition, when you do a lot of numeric computations, single lines of languages like Matlab and R could perform tasks that would require tens and maybe hundreds of lines of C/C++ (again depending on libraries available in C/C++).
This is also a reminder that setting up your project to use multiple languages could be beneficial in the long run. Often, you can use C/C++ for the most time consuming parts of the program and leave the rest to the easier to use scripting languages like Python.
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