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I'm currently writing some Windows GUI applications in Python 2.7 using pyQT4 and pyInstaller. These compiled executables are taking about 3-6 seconds to open. I've eliminated UPX already and seen some time shaved off the load, and some more by not packaging it as a single exe but I'd rather have a single distributable file.

I was wondering if IronPython would be a better at providing a quick loading application. Or any of the other version of Python, or better yet if there is anything else i can do to minimize the wait for the GUI to be drawn on the screen.

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    In general CPython starts faster than IronPython since it doesn't have to spin up the .NET runtime and JIT compile everything. I don't for sure if this extends to compiled exes but I would bet that it does. – Jeff Hardy Mar 14 '14 at 11:35

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IronPython does add a performance hit to a number of specific areas compared to Python. However, I would not draw the conclusion that it is always slower. There has been a post already on that topic Why is IronPython faster than the Official Python Interpreter

The most important aspect to consider is have you fully optimized everything in your Python project? As in, have you performed any code profiling?

If the answer is yes then you could attempt to migrate to a different toolkit or language. If you chose IronPython (link) it would be wise to migrate your GUI to .NET (winforms, XAML, etc). Another option (albeit unpopular to most) would be to use tkinter. Tkinter is very powerful in that one can fully-customize the code to be nothing more and nothing less than the project requires. Of course that will add considerable typing time. But I have made Python apps that load and draw a window almost immediately and quite honestly almost looked like it came out of VS2012.

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