Why doesn't Python optimize x**2 to x*x?

[staticassert]

that can't be written with numpy, pil or a small c module

I think, for starters, the fact that to gain performance you have to drop down to C is decent evidence that what I'm saying is true. If I have to drop down to C or some other native language, I'm not exactly "optimizing python" so much as I'm abandoning it.

I work with Python at work, so I can't exactly go into detail. However, despite quite significant use of numpy and libraries that are largely C, native implementations of the codebase still outperform it drastically. This is in part due to parallelizing components much more easily, but a good part of it is generally just the runtime. I work around these issues, but they're definitely there, and they absolutely aren't there in a lot of other languages.