> A compiler for C/C++/Rust could turn that kind of expression into three operations: load the value of x, multiply it by two, and then store the result. In Python, however, there is a long list of operations that have to be performed, starting with finding the type of p, calling its __getattribute__() method, through unboxing p.x and 2, to finally boxing the result, which requires memory allocation. None of that is dependent on whether Python is interpreted or not, those steps are required based on the language semantics.