Python in sci/tech applications

[robert]

bearophileHUGS at lycos.com wrote:
> mattf:
>> 3) -There's a problem with development under Windows.
> 
> It's possibile to compile Python with MinGW, and to create extensions
> with it. So some site can host a single zip file that contains both
> MinGW and Python compiled with it, all ready and set. A person not much
> expert can then create compiled small extensions in a short time
> without too much complexities. (Or maybe the D language can be packed
> into that, instead of MinGW, to do similar things. D can be a good
> language used with Python) But then probably PIL, scipy, etc have to be
> compiled again for such alternative official or semi-official Python
> distribution.
> 

Is it really not possible to create extension libs with older MSVC or Mingw, which work with regular Python binaries version 2.4 and 2.5 ?
Maybe with some special import libraries?

(another option is to stay with Python2.3, which has a small memory footprint and compiles with crtl4.2 libs (VC6, ...) )

-robert