Yes, RustPython has been in development since at least 2018.
> Wouldn't this be making waves much earlier in its development process?
It's been posted on HN several times before: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=rustpython
It’s “I’m making a Python interpreter in rust,” claims emitted into the void with increasing engagement as it grows in usefulness.
Edit: and you can even see that in the HN search above. Every year it’s had a little more functionality and a little more engagement than the last.
It only ran about 3x slower than PUC Lua... And never collected garbage either :P
It's still a lot of work but the only need to make the "built in" parts of the language and that's a lot smaller subset.
Example of what im talking about: https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython/pull/3858