I believe that shooting 38 Specials in your Python will reduce wear and make the mechanism last longer. I have one, and I have stopped shooting it because the things are so expensive! Does that make sense?
No.
I did talk to a National PPC champion while scoring his Bullseye Pistol targets. He is one of two to shoot a 1500 on the PPC course.
He said he only saw one shooter using a Colt (in PPC). Saw a few Dan Wesson's but the majority were using Smith K frame revolvers, but I got the idea that once the L frame came out that displaced the K frame revolvers.
I asked what wore, and primarily it was the ratchet and the hand. The S&W had the advantage for timing wear. The Colt, the cylinder indexes into position just as the hammer falls, making the mechanism less tolerant of wear on the ratchet and cylinder hand. The S&W indexes into position before the hammer falls. He had a broken firing pin, said when he was shooting K frames in events that required "major" loads, the barrel forcing cone would crack on K frames, but the L frame fixed that.
Incidentally, I asked how many round he had fired through his Shilen 38 barrel, on his K frame, and he estimated 750,000 rounds! he said it still shot 1 " groups (I assume 50 yards?) in a rest and he was of the opinion that there was no wear. He did say the Colt barrels were tighter and it was not uncommon to see S&W fitted with Colt barrels as the tighter barrels were more accurate. Another shooter, a neophyte as he indicated he had only fired 250,000 rounds through his K frame S&W, he also indicated hand and ratchet wear issues. I assume they regularly changed mainsprings and any other spring that wore out. Springs are consumables in my opinion. Don't be a dumb butt and run a pistol that squibs with "harder primers" as some time in the future, you will stick a bullet in the barrel with the "thinner primers". The basic PPC load was a 148 LWC with 2.7 grains Bullseye. The bullet was around 690 to 700 fps and that was extremely accurate out to 50 yards. Crimp was critical, I don't remember the numbers but you could over and under crimp the things. The PPC Champ shot factory ammunition, I guess at some point you get free ammunition from a sponsor.