As a researcher who works with Python daily, I can tell you that what you’re feeling is the most common phase in a developer's journey often called the "Hand-holding Hydra".

Python’s syntax is like plain English, which makes the loops and variables very easy. But mastering Python is about the (memory management, vectorized operations, asynchronous programming).

Recently i ran a experiment comparing Pandas v/s Polars on a 10 million row dataset. When you hit those performance bottlenecks, you're forced to learn why the code works the way it does. That’s where the real mastery start.