[tom_mellior]

Ah, OK. Yes, those LOAD_NAMEs are slower than LOAD_FAST. If you put the code into a function, you get this:

    >>> def f(foo, b):
    ...     a = foo.bar(b)
    ... 
    >>> dis.dis(f)
      2           0 LOAD_FAST                0 (foo)
                  3 LOAD_ATTR                0 (bar)
                  6 LOAD_FAST                1 (b)
                  9 CALL_FUNCTION            1 (1 positional, 0 keyword pair)
                 12 STORE_FAST               2 (a)
                 15 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
                 18 RETURN_VALUE

LOAD_FAST is the normal case for locals inside a function. Not sure off the top of my head where LOAD_NAME would be generated in normal usage (i.e. where you don't evaluate code from a string).

Edit: Also, I'm talking about Python 3. Maybe you aren't.