But sometimes you have a case where two objects ... like integers and strings, are never tracked. Generally, the garbage collector doesn’t need tuning to run well. Python’s development team ...

Defining a list in Python is easy—just use the bracket ... For instance, you can’t sort a mix of integers and strings, but you can sort a list that is all integers or all strings.

Not sure about rational support, but SmallTalk and ABC (predecessor to Python) have 'exact' or something, at least for integers, so you can do silly things like 1000!, if you have enough memory ...