Most of the responses are of the "Why Python is more pleasant than C++" variety, but the original poster specifically said he had experience with Perl. As such, arguments like "automatic memory management" don't carry any weight.
>From my experience as both a Perl and Python user--and I do prefer Perl for many tasks--the big win for Python is when you have complex data structures: dictionaries containing arrays, arrays of arrays, array of dictionaries, and so on. This kind of thing is awkward in Perl (you need to use references), but perfectly natural and obvious in Python. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
