to be concrete:

    fac = lambda n: 1 if n<=1 else n*fac(n-1)
    a, b = fac(42), fac(69)
    a + b

is 3 lines of python; how many lines of C code would it take to execute?

One: return 1.7112245243e98

Joking aside: these are not catch-all comparisons. Nor is the article. But Python is mucher slower and much safer than C. It's easier to start in Python than in C.

;-P Just to be pedantic, if you're going to all the trouble to give (modulo lack of a repl) a wrong answer fast, might as well do it really quickly:

    return 0;

in the hopes that compiles down to something like:

    xor rax, rax
    ret