Python Popularity: Questions and Comments

[Courageous]

>and to defeat the speed problem: an OPTIMIZING NATIVE CODE COMPILER

You're not the first person to think of this. One of the problems
is that designing an optimizing native code compiler for a fully
dynamic language like Python is quite a difficult task.

>1. Since the language is currently evolving very rapidly it is probably
>    a bad time to start such a project,

Not really. The basic parts of Python which the compiler needs to
support properly have been present for years. It has to do with
first class language access to the dictionary which exists in every
namespace, and how this first class access intertangles semantically
with Python itself. Or at least that is one major element of the
picture. IIRC, the generation of execution frames plays another role,
and these likewise offer first class accessibility in Python. Again,
they are intertwined. 

C//