No
When you run python, the first step is to convert to bytecode, which is what those .pyc files are. Comments are removed from these, so it won't matter*.
If you run with the -O or -OO option, python will produce "optimized" pyo files, which are negligibly faster, if faster at all. The main difference is that:
- with
-O assertion are removed,
- with the
-OO option, the __doc__ strings are stripped out. Given that those are sometimes needed, running with -OO isn't recommended.
* it's been pointed out below that .pyc files are only saved for modules. Thus the top-level executable must be recompiled every time it's run. This step could slow down a massive python executable. In practice, most of the code should reside in modules, making this a non-issue.
