I’ve found that jq is great for quick one-offs. But it also has a very rich syntax that allows for more complicated use cases. That said, instead of heading for the jq manpage I find it’s much easier to hack something together in Python. What’s the draw of jq here? The ability to parse with only a command line?

For me, the draw is that I don't have to remember how to load a file, parse that file into JSON, and how to access the resultant data structure in $language. If I'm after quick access to a couple of things as part of a pipeline, it's much less cognitive load for me to use jq.