Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to write a small, simple Python program. Maybe something that builds a list of five or six elements, runs a simple map over it, then converts it to a dict somehow. Something simple.
Then run it through gdb and watch every single CPU opcode that is executed for the code you wrote. Not Python opcode; CPU. Print something first and trigger off of that or something, I'm not worried about Python startup costs here.
Then do the same with a roughly equivalent compiled program. Doesn't have to be Rust, C or whatever you know would do just fine.
Yes. You can get a big speed improvement over pure Python simply by moving it to a compiled language and making effectively no other changes. Python is slow. This is not a value judgment. It is a big mistake to think that this is somehow an emotional judgment about Python stemming from anger or hatred or something and that anyone talking about Python's speed issues are just haters or something. I like Python just fine. But you will understand how it is not a value judgment when you are running the Python program through gdb. It is simply an engineering reality that anyone using Python needs to understand about Python. You can get yourself into a lot of trouble not understanding this about Python.
Is there more things going on than a straight port? Possibly. But I don't find the difference unbelievable for it to be coming from a straight port with no major changes.