Question: "What exactly is python used for besides shell-type scripting?"

Answer:

Too busy to answer properly, but I'll just mention that Fermilab uses a home-grown python package called Enstore to manage their data store of 3 Petabytes of physics data, growing at 1PB/year. The transfers of ~25TB/day to and from that system is what keeps me busy.

(A presentation about their system.)