Recently, I reported how stdlib slows down `import requests`. https://github.com/requests/requests/issues/4315#issuecomment-385584974 For Python 3.8, my ideas for faster startup time are: * Add lazy compiling API or flag in `re` module. The pattern is compiled when first used. * Add IntEnum and IntFlag alternative in C, like PyStructSequence for namedtuple. It will make importing `socket` and `ssl` module much faster. (Both module has huge enum/flag). * Add special casing for UTF-8 and ASCII in TextIOWrapper. When application uses only UTF-8 or ASCII, we can skip importing codecs and encodings package entirely. * Add faster and simpler http.parser (maybe, based on h11 [1]) and avoid using email module in http module. [1]: https://h11.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ I don't have significant estimate how they can make `import requests` faster, but I believe most of these ideas are worth enough. Regards,