This isn't an attitude of "no" - it's an attitude of "yes" to other things. The arguments are that making Python startup fast makes other things worse, and we care about those other things.
Here are some other things we can say "yes" to:
- Rewrite as much of Mercurial in Rust as possible, which will provide performance improvements well beyond what Python can possibly offer. https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/OxidationPlan
- Spend resources on developing PyPy, which (being a JIT) has relatively slow startup but much faster performance in general, for people who want fast performance.
- Write compilers from well-typed Python to native code.
- Keep CPython easy to hack on, so that more people with a "can do" spirit can successfully contribute to CPython instead of it being a mess of special cases in Guido's head.
Will you join me in saying "yes" to these things and not convincing ourselves to accept mediocrity?
Here are some other things we can say "yes" to:
- Rewrite as much of Mercurial in Rust as possible, which will provide performance improvements well beyond what Python can possibly offer. https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/OxidationPlan
- Spend resources on developing PyPy, which (being a JIT) has relatively slow startup but much faster performance in general, for people who want fast performance.
- Write compilers from well-typed Python to native code.
- Keep CPython easy to hack on, so that more people with a "can do" spirit can successfully contribute to CPython instead of it being a mess of special cases in Guido's head.
Will you join me in saying "yes" to these things and not convincing ourselves to accept mediocrity?