[Python-ideas] Python-ideas Digest, Vol 90, Issue 30

[Cameron Simpson]

On 22May2014 08:43, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
>On 05/22/2014 08:32 AM, Ned Batchelder wrote:
>>The whole point of this proposal is to recognize that there are times (debugging, coverage measurement) when
>>optimizations are harmful, and to avoid them.
>
>Having read through the issue on the tracker, I find myself swayed 
>towards Neds point of view.

I've been with Ned from the first post, but have been playing (slow) catchup on 
the discussion.

I'd personally be fine with a -O0 command line switch in keeping with a 
somewhat common C-compiler convention, or with an environment variable.

If all the optimizations in the compiler/interpreter are a distinct step, then 
having a switch that just says "skip this step, we do not want the naive code 
transformed at all" seems both desirable and easy.

And finally, the sig quote below really did come up at random for this message.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au>

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time:
premature optimization is the root of all evil. - Donald Knuth