CPython vs. Jython/JPython

[Jan Dries]

Ingo Adler wrote:
> 
> Bill de hÓra wrote:
> 
> > ANSI C is very possibly more portable than Java.
> 
> Really? What are the #ifdefs for in "ANSI C" - Python?

As Bjarne Stroustoup sais in his FAQ answer to the question how Java
compares to C++: Java isn't really platform independent! Java is a
platform. A virtual platform that can be superimposed on many other
hardware/OS platforms, but a platform nonetheless. The only platform
independent piece of Java is the JVM, which, by the way, is written in
C, and I expect it to have just as many #ifdefs as does the Python
interpreter.

The question of portability is not whether Java source of even byte code
is portable across java interpreters, because it by definition is (or
should be, if everybody, MS included, stuck to the JVM spec). The
question of portability is how portable the Java platform itself (i.e.
the JVM) really is. 
And it remains a fact that (today at least) the Python platform is
available on several hardware/OS combinations where there's no Java
platform available today.

> 
> > Raw C written by a good programmer is typically more efficient in space ...
> 
> There are benchmarks that show the opposite.

Could you give a pointer to these benchmarks?

> 

Regards,
Jan