why is python slow?

[Paul Rubin]

Fernando Pereira <pereira at cis.upenn.edu> writes:
> The irreducible fact is that Python needs extensive runtime type checks,
> Java doesn't. One could argue that agressive inlining of built-in operations
> and type checks followed by removal of redundant machine instructions might
> have the effect of removing most type checks, but that needs to be shown.

40 years of Lisp compiler implementations have shown pretty conclusively
that these problems are surmountable.