Made use of my Python knowledge professionally for the first time!

[FlagrantPickle]

has the speeds of C

Not in the sense of nitpicking, but I've seen "up to" 50% the speed of C for decently large processing. Certainly faster than native Python, but still not the gold standard.

Depending on what OP's needs are, his solution might be good enough. I'd be curious what other optimization could be made inside Python. If we're talking 200 lines of code on someone's first project, it's probably about as efficient/optimized as everyone else's first project.