From the complete opposite side, I've built some tiny bits of near irrelevant code where python has been unacceptable, e.g. in shell startup / in bash's PROMPT_COMMAND, etc. It ends up having a very painfully obvious startup time, even if the code is nearing the equivalent of Hello World
time python -I -c 'print("Hello World")'
real 0m0.014s
time bash --noprofile -c 'echo "Hello World"'
real 0m0.001s
What exactly do you need 1ms instead of 14ms startup time in a shell startup? The difference is barely perceptible.
Most of the time starting up is time spent seartching the filesystem for thousands of packages.