title: Should I generate *.pyc files when deploying?
body: <p>When developing a Python web app (Flask/uWSGI) and running it on my local machine, <code>*.pyc</code> files are generated by the interpreter. My understanding is that these compiled files can make things <em>load</em> faster, but not necessarily <em>run</em> faster.</p>
  
  <p>When I deploy this same app to production, it runs under a user account that has no write permissions on the local file system. There are no <code>*.pyc</code> files committed to source control, and no effort is made to generate them during the deploy. Even if Python wanted to write a <code>.pyc</code> file at runtime, it would not be able to.</p>
  
  <p>Recently I started wondering if this has any tangible effect on the performance of the app, either in terms of the very first pageview after the process starts, or consistently throughout its entire lifetime.</p>
  
  <p>Should I throw a <code>python -m compileall</code> in as part of my deploy scripts?</p>