Viper: yet another python implementation

[Dirk-Ulrich Heise]

Bruce Dodson schrieb in Nachricht ...
>Ni!  I don't see the point of creating a variant of python that aims to be
>more efficient, but does so at the cost of taking away Python's most
>powerful optimization mechanism: external C modules.

Here, i agree with Bruce.
At the moment, it's common practice to accelerate a Python
program that's too slow by moving parts of it into homebrew
extension modules. Taking away this option would maybe
invalidate Viper as a means of optimization. It would be okay
with me, though, if you allow a different kind of extension
modules (a different interface to the extension module)-
if ViperC creates C code, i don't see a big problem with
that.

>I also think that a
>python that has enough knowledge of types to perform inlining... well, such
>a beast is no longer Python, no matter how similar the syntax appears.

In this case, i disagree with Bruce. Implementing a subset
of Pythons semantic possibilities and keeping the same syntax makes
sense in real life. Just try to write your production code in a less
wild fashion than usually, not changing bindings all over, and you'd have
a comfortable way of getting at more speed without rewriting as
much stuff as if you had to port it to C.

Dirk