Ugh. Python could be fast, but the python core team / GvR put so many ridiculous constraints on what can change that maybe at best it gets like 10% faster, some day. Anything meaningful means breaking compatibility with extensions, and they absolutely won't do that. I feel like GvR got burned in the python 2->3 transition, but he learned the wrong lesson. The lesson he seemed to learn was never break compatibility but what he should have learned is don't break compatibility for stupid things nobody cares about. Making the interpreter much faster is something people would care about, but they'll never modify it in any meaningful way nor will they ever endorse something like PyPy.