I noticed that CPython and the various libraries built out of the repo aren't using the "/OPT:REF" linker optimization on Windows.  This optimization allows the linker to throw away dead/unreachable code, resulting in a substantial decrease in binary size.  That in turn also reduces the amount of Disk I/O that must be done to get these binaries in memory (which can be meaningful on spinning hard drives that are still rather common), and the reference set of applications using Python.

I'll send a PR for this shortly, just filing the issue to be able to reference it in the PR.