I doubt it. The "stolen" source code build had better performance than the final game.
I don't know much about the leaked version you reference, but it's most likely that any extra performance is due to a lack of complete graphical / AI features.
Then I put it to you, that your code isn't optimized.
Sorry, that's not true. My engine runs very fast, even compared to many commercial games.
Disabling optimizations means that a lot of the CPU and memory intensive tasks (like dynamic paging and batching) are EXTREMELY inefficient since every line of your code is compiled as it appears - nothing is optimized. I'm not saying the speed of C# or anything else is this slow; I was simply responding to this absurd statement:
so the effect of any (real or imagined) compiler optimization is trivial at best
I wouldn't say that people who've worked on developing one of the most advanced (and probably optimized) 3D engines in existence over the last what, 15 years (?) is a beginner.
Ok, maybe you're right then (assuming what you say is true). Do you have any proof of these 3D engine veterans complaining about rogue pointers and missing semicolons?
Not on the right hardware.
Ok, assuming Crysis could have been released months ago due to the "accelerated" development of using Python, what good would it do you? You'd have to wait 10 years until a PC powerful enough came out.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever tried implementing graphical techniques anywhere near as complex as some of the commercial games out there? If you had any idea what's going on internally in something like CryEngine 2, you'd realize how ridiculously slow it would be if implemented completely in a scripting engine.