[ANNOUNCE] Garbage collection for Python

[Christian Tismer]

Just van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Michael Hudson <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> > To someone who might know: what hope is there for this to go
> > into 1.6?
> [ ... ]
> > It would be, in my opinion, be a really really really good thing; for
> > one thing it would help in language wars...
> 
> Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> > sorry, but stackless python is the only really really really good
> > thing that hasn't yet been added to the core.  this is just really
> > really good.

Hey! If Stackless goes with GC, can we get 5 times "really"? :-))

> Oh how I agree... (Now lets hope the new Python GC isn't
> incompatible with Stackless... Project anyone? ;-)

I'm currently looking into that. Seems to be *very* possible
and *very* worthy to be done. Many cyclic issues with
continuations are much easier and probably more efficient
to solve with *the* GC at hand, similar to Mikecode Hackson's
observation.

> While were at it, here's a little Stackless news:
> - Christian is redesigning the continuation module, it already has
>   improved quite a bit over the last two weeks.

It will become simpler, simpler and simpler.

> - Even so, Chris and I agree that continuations should eventually
>   be completely hidden from the user, since it's so incredibly
>   obscure, hardly anyone will understand it. Not good for CP4E ;-)

Today I'm saying so. But I think there will come a time
where people are told "look, a continuation is as simple as 1+1",
and they'll say "sure? I thought a co is simpler."

...
> - Dunno about coroutines: it appears they are much harder to get
>   right, and the people on the python-coro at egroups.com list only
>   seem to make slow progress. (But then again, I've only been
>   there for a week or so, so who am I to say that...)

That's not a continuation matter. The problem is to get
a really really really (really? :) good coroutine design
together that fits everybody's expectations. Expressing
them with continuation is just a homework. Doing the
right design is very hard.

<snip>

until-Tim-Peters-tells-us-the-way-hopefully-<0.90000000000000002 wink>

-- 
Christian Tismer             :^)   <mailto:tismer at appliedbiometrics.com>
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