Downside of Python

Execution speed

After using it for 17 years and teaching it for 12, the only downside to Python I’ve found is that, as currently implemented, its execution speed may not always be as fast as that of compiled languages such as C and C++.
We’ll talk about implementation concepts in detail later in this book. In short, the standard implementations of Python today compile (i.e., translate) source code statements to an intermediate format known as byte code and then interpret the byte code. Byte code provides portability, as it is a platform-independent format. However, because Python is not compiled all the way down to binary machine code (e.g., instructions for an Intel chip), some programs will run more slowly in Python than in a fully compiled language like C.