RPython is a restricted subset of Python which amongst other things allows compilation of Python to native code. A more interesting feature is that it can also be used to generate a JIT compiler for a language simply by writing an interpreter with it.

Nice in-depth look at how this magic works.

Sounds useful. I'll have to look into that. Thanks :)

If you haven't tried PyPy (http://pypy.org/) you really should. It's the whole reason they're doing this crazy Python-to-C/JIT thing. It's moving incredibly fast as a project and hopefully will catch up with CPython soon. About my only gripe is SciPy/Numpy won't work due to their reliance on the CPython API.