Hello, Here is a video I made discussing the various types of Python available in Maya. And when to use which API. A lot of people still use cmds, and haven't discovered the advantages of Pymel yet. Hopefully this will help spreading the word. The official Autodesk intro is also great at comparing both of them. And I go…
Tbh, I've found that for situations where performance is an issue cmds isn't faster enough to make me want to use it over pymel. There's no doubt that pymel is slower - noticeably so in many situations - but if you're really interested in speed you don't want to be using python or even doing the work in Maya if you can…
That's a very broad generalization - borderline trash talk. Too slow for what? Material managers? UV tools? Exporters? Auto-riggers? I have worked on everything of that except the latter (rigging is not my thing) and I've never had any performance problems what so ever. The real benefit is that developing tools with PyMEL…