[albertzeyer]

I have asked about using RPython as a generic standalone language before. I think the official statement is that is was never intended to become one, and it's really a very minimal subset of Python (so basically no existing Python code will run, it would require heavy refactoring or complete rewrite), and it's only specifically those features that they currently need, and it might also be a moving target, and they don't want to give certain guarantees on stability of the language etc.

Once you consider that you anyway need to write very different kind of code for RPython, then maybe just using Nim or some other language is a better idea?

[kombine]

A general purpose language should be suitable to writing its own compiler. If it's to slow for that, what's the point?

[alextremblay]

A general purpose compiled language should be suitable for writing its own compiler, but I don’t think the same holds true for interpreted languages.

[Hasnep]

A language can be suitable for writing a compiler, but if there is another language that's 10x faster that's also suitable, then you're losing out on a lot of compilation speed for no reason.

Dog-fooding a language by writing a compiler in it can lead to the designers adding language features to make compiler development easier, even if they detract from the design of the language for the 99% of users who aren't writing a compiler.