My (nowadays totally non-updated) website is built on similar approach with make+python (but with xml+xslt, which was the technology of the day in mid-00s) and

My (nowadays totally non-updated) website is built on similar approach with make+python (but with xml+xslt, which was the technology of the day in mid-00s) and the CPython's startup time was always issue even to the point that the incremental rebuilds essentially didn't make much sense (but writing the machinery was at least a fun experiment).