1. VM-targeting languages have even more trivial cross-compilation, like you even get a single .jar file 2. There are hundreds of languages like that 3. It’s not too hard to be faster than python - Java, C#, JS are all in the same ballpark as Go (and for more complex programs some can often surpass it due to the much better GC-implementations) 4. Very very slightly easier than the above mentioned bunch. But with Java’s stellar backwards compatibility record you pretty much just has to have a big enough JVM version and that’s it.