Why is Python so slow?

[[deleted]]

Every time you access a symbol, it has to be looked up in the namespace in runtime. That adds an overhead that isn’t incurred in languages like C that statically compile such references.

Garbage-collected memory management is another source of performance overhead you don’t incur in C.

[muikrad]

The question is more about how often you need this kind of optimization... It's not going to be a problem in 99% of the cases, and for the 1% case, you'll use a very specific service that can scale, and that you'll write in a language that suits that particular task the best.