The "..." above had some important bits in it. My point was, how much of the speedup came from switching to C, and how much came from all the other stuff he did

The "..." above had some important bits in it. My point was, how much of the speedup came from switching to C, and how much came from all the other stuff he did (much of which could also be done in Python). Switching from a scripting language to C doesn't mean an automatic huge speed boost. It depends where your time is being spent.