title: Is it feasible to compile Python to machine code?
body: <p>How feasible would it be to compile Python (possibly via an intermediate C representation) into machine code?</p>
  
  <p>Presumably it would need to link to a Python runtime library, and any parts of the Python standard library which were Python themselves would need to be compiled (and linked in) too.</p>
  
  <p>Also, you would need to bundle the Python interpreter if you wanted to do dynamic evaluation of expressions, but perhaps a subset of Python that didn't allow this would still be useful.</p>
  
  <p>Would it provide any speed and/or memory usage advantages?  Presumably the startup time of the Python interpreter would be eliminated (although shared libraries would still need loading at startup).</p>