Note, CPython hasn't strictly been an interpreter for a long long time. It compiles .py files into .pyc files, then runs them. It also does a fair bit of cachin

Note, CPython hasn't strictly been an interpreter for a long long time. It compiles .py files into .pyc files, then runs them. It also does a fair bit of caching. However, it's virtual machine doesn't do much optimization. Yeah, it pre-allocates lots of common data-structures, and reuses old ones rather than using new ones if possible, and I think it might do some stuff with iterators ... but it's nothing like PyPy or a modern JVM.