This is similar to how https://www.oilshell.org/ https://www.oilshell.org/ is written There are two complete implementations 1. one that runs under a stock Py

This is similar to how https://www.oilshell.org/ https://www.oilshell.org/ is written There are two complete implementations 1. one that runs under a stock Python interpreter (which doesn't use static types) 2. one that's pure C++, translated from statically typed Python code, and from data structures generated in Python In the second case, everything before main() is "burned off" at build time -- e.g. there is metaprogramming on lexers, flag parsers, dicts, etc. that gets run and then turned into static C data -- i.e. data that incurs zero startup cost Comparison to Pre-Scheme: https://lobste.rs/s/tjiwrd/revival_pre_scheme_systems_programming#c_s7b2sp https://lobste.rs/s/tjiwrd/revival_pre_scheme_systems_progra... (types, compiler output, and GC) Brief Descriptions of a Python to C++ Translator - https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2022/05/mycpp.html https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2022/05/mycpp.html ... And related to your other point, I remember looking at Racket's implementation around the time it started the Chez Scheme conversion. For some reason, I was surprised that it was over 100K lines of hand-written C in the runtime -- it looked similar to CPython in many ways (which is at least 250K lines of C in the core).