Python Compiling

[Terje Johan Abrahamsen]

First of all, I am going to warn you. I will ask some stupid questions. I
haven't programmed too much, and don't really know how it all links
together.

But, I guess my question boils down to, why is not Python a compiled
language?

To my best knowledge, the computer understand 0s and 1s. So, any programming
language must be brought down to that. Even assembler must be somewhat
remade into computerlanguage. A compiler for for example C, will take my C
code, and transform it into computerlanguage. The same does the intepreter
for Python. However, the interpreter does that step every time I run the
program, versus the compiler does it once, and gets it over with. So, for
the computer, the computerlanguage that it runs doesn't really differ
between if I wrote my code in Python and run it thru the intepreter, wrote
it in C and compiled it, or wrote assambler and did whatever you do with
assambler. So, when Guido made the first Python, he deceided he wanted an
intepreted language, and wrote an intepreter. Could someone write a compiler
and get Python to be a compiled language like C? I guess Py2Exe does to some
extent that, but to my understanding it is not exactly the same as a
complete compiler. It more just copies the files from the intepreter that
the program needs.

Is it not possible to write a complete compiler like the C compiler for
Python? Or is it just that nobody has done it? Or must the language be
constructed differently?

Thanks for any help to clearify the subject. But please try to keep it
understandable for also one with somewhat more limited understanding of the
subject....