Python is faster than C

[Matthias]

aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes:
> While I'm generally in favor of what you're talking about, it seems to a
> certain extent that you're simply shifting complexity.  Maintaining the
> simplicity of the Python VM is an important goal, I think, and some of
> your suggestions run counter to that goal.

Isn't the whole idea of very high level languages to shift complexity
from the user code to the language implementation?  

That's not a rhetorical question: Why is it that "simplicity of the
Python VM is an important goal"?  I would guess that overall it pays
to have a more complex language implementation and be rewarded by
simpler user code: For any decent language there's much more user code
out there than language implementation code.

One example where Python in the past made (in my opinion, for my
particular projects) the wrong choice is speed: People argued that
"simplicity of the Python VM" is more important than speed gains.  The
result (for my code) was that after profiling, etc., I was coding
significant parts of my programs in C.  No productivity gain
observed. With JIT compilation (psyco) this step might become
unnecessary: More complex VM, greatly simplified user code.