[Python-Dev] Wordcode v2

[Demur Rumed]

Saw recent discussion:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2016-February/143013.html

I remember trying WPython; it was fast. Unfortunately it feels it came at
the wrong time when development was invested in getting py3k out the door.
It also had a lot of other ideas like *_INT instructions which allowed
having oparg to be a constant int rather than needing to LOAD_CONST one.
Anyways I'll stop reminiscing

abarnert has started an experiment with wordcode:
https://github.com/abarnert/cpython/blob/c095a32f2a68ac708466b9c64906cc4d0f5de1ee/Python/wordcode.md

I've personally benchmarked this fork with positive results. This
experiment seeks to be conservative-- it doesn't seek to introduce new
opcodes or combine BINARY_OP's all into a single op where the currently
unused-in-wordcode arg then states the kind of binary op (à la COMPARE_OP).
I've submitted a pull request which is working on fixing tests & updating
peephole.c

Bringing this up on the list to figure out if there's interest in a basic
wordcode change. It feels like there's no downsides: faster code, smaller
bytecode, simpler interpretation of bytecode (The Nth instruction starts at
the 2Nth byte if you count EXTENDED_ARG as an instruction). The only
downside is the transitional cost

What'd be necessary for this to be pulled upstream?
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