That's a excellent point. That ecosystem is also one of the main reason packaging in python is a bit of a clusterf*ck.
For C/C++ extensions, I think there may be hope to support a slow/emulating C API and a faster, less internals-leaking new API that extensions could adopt. It would take years for the migration, but if speed gains was say 5x, I think it could be realistic.
pypy managed to emulate the C API fairly well, after all. E.g. you can build numpy and pandas on top of pypy and it actually kinda works.
For C/C++ extensions, I think there may be hope to support a slow/emulating C API and a faster, less internals-leaking new API that extensions could adopt. It would take years for the migration, but if speed gains was say 5x, I think it could be realistic.
pypy managed to emulate the C API fairly well, after all. E.g. you can build numpy and pandas on top of pypy and it actually kinda works.