[IronPython] The slow part of IronPython

[Dan Eloff]

In my experience IronPython 2 is fast, I find it to be 3x CPython for
some common tasks like serialization.

But one area where it still lags way behind is module importing. I've
noticed module importing to be an order of magnitude, over 20x, slower
in most cases.

I've got to think that if it's so expensive to import modules,
following the CPython approach of caching generated code in .pyc files
makes a lot of sense. I notice with Silverlight that when a project
gets large enough, the module importing actually takes more time than
network transfer! I'm seriously considering preloading modules in
background threads to save time on multi core/processor machines.

Are there any plans afoot to address this?

-Dan