[Python-Dev] Parrot -- should life imitate satire?

[Eric S. Raymond]

Tim Peters <tim@digicool.com>:
> The per-opcode fetch-decode-dispatch overhead is very high in SW too, so a
> register VM can win simply by cutting the number of opcodes needed to
> accomplish a given bit of useful work.

That's an interesting idea.  OK, so possibly I was wrong -- I hadn't considered
that stack-push/stack-pop operations might introduce overhead comparable
to the order-of-magnitude speed difference between registers and main memory
in hardware.  I'm still skeptical, but my mind is open.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

You know why there's a Second Amendment?  In case the government fails to
follow the first one.
         -- Rush Limbaugh, in a moment of unaccustomed profundity 17 Aug 1993