Writing C is hard; are there any alternatives?

There are a number of alternatives to writing your own C extensions, depending on what you’re trying to do.

If you need more speed, Psyco generates x86 assembly code from Python bytecode. You can use Psyco to compile the most time-critical functions in your code, and gain a significant improvement with very little effort, as long as you’re running on a machine with an x86-compatible processor.