Apologies if you've already read this, but this paper was absolutely enlightening for me on what a more performant Python would look like: http://julialang.org/

Apologies if you've already read this, but this paper was absolutely enlightening for me on what a more performant Python would look like: http://julialang.org/images/julia-dynamic-2012-tr.pdf http://julialang.org/images/julia-dynamic-2012-tr.pdf especially section 2 on language design, which discusses how it's actually different. (And yes, I know I'm just adding to the people plugging Julia here) Among other things, Julia actually avoids forms of dynamism that are in practice rarely employed by programs in dynamic languages. Existing code is immutable, but new code may always be generated if different behaviour is desired. I'm not entirely sure if I could accurately say Julia allows one to trade between efficiency and dynamism when each is desired, but it does appear to be a much better balanced approach than is normal.