python on the smalltalk VM

[Michael Hudson]

Douglas Alan <nessus at mit.edu> writes:

> After many years of research, they came up with a compiler for Self
> that would generate code that runs about one half to one third the
> speed of compiled C code.  This is 30 to 50 times faster than
> Python.

No it isn't.  At least, not for me.  Generally I find that fairly
optimized C modules are about 40-60 times faster than really optimized
Python (I'm better at Python than C).  Obviously "it depends", but
I've found these numbers to be fairly consistent over a variety of
tasks.

> I see no reason that the same techniques couldn't be applied to
> speed up Python, but it would probably be a hell of a lot of work
> and slow down compile times significantly.

I do wonder what the Symbolics Lisp Machine people could do with
Python, or in fact any of the Common Lisp vendors.  Would be a
decidedly pricey experiment...

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  Haha! You had a *really* weak argument! <wink>
                                      -- Moshe Zadka, comp.lang.python