And if he'd applied the same optimizations to the C version, it would have trounced the optimized Python version. I really don't like it when authors unfairly

And if he'd applied the same optimizations to the C version, it would have trounced the optimized Python version. I really don't like it when authors unfairly penalize their "not preferred" solution -- it makes me feel like the entire time spent reading the article was nothing more than listening to pointless chest thumping by the author. The whole article was barely about the actual compiling of Python code.