python compiled to native in less than a year?

[scott hathaway]

All the .NET languages will be translated to IL and then from IL to native
code...including python and perl.  I am at VSLive 2001 this week (no flames,
please) and ActiveState gave a demo of Visual Perl, showing how a class
written in it (living in a .dll - now called an assembly) could be called
from VB.  This will be the same for Python.

This will be huge for Python - whether you like MS or not.  I think this is
awesome.  I will be able to use Python to do "real" development in Windows.
Programmers like me have a very difficult time learning how to do a gui with
wxWindows or Tkinter.  It is much easier to paint the controls on a form.
Now, I will be able to do that and use Python as the language!

This is wonderful for anyone programming on Windows now, and will be even
more wonderful as soon as someone converts IL to native on Linux.

I think that this will be much more influential to Python than Jython.  I
think it may be the new "preferred" way to use Python for many Windows
developers.

Scott

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:946coc130tl at news2.newsguy.com...
> "Tim Roberts" <timr at probo.com> wrote in message
> news:0luc6toovfccbqspkvc0dkqkuc5dck7u51 at 4ax.com...
> > "scotth" <slhath at flash.net> wrote:
> > >
> > >Since Python will be one of the .NET languages, it will get compiled
like
> > >all the other .NET languages.  Whatever the problems, ActiveState/MS
> > >have/are going to over come it if my info is correct.
> >
> > Where did you get your information?  Do you have a URL?  The other
> repliers
> > are delighting in nitpicking and Microsoft bashing, but no one seems to
> > have questioned the basic premise.
> >
> > If I understand the .NET concept correctly, any COMPILED language will
be
> > compiled to IL.  However, I don't think there is anything to prevent a
> > language from being interpreted.  That is, Python might survive in the
> .NET
> > framework as source text.
>
> There's nothing stopping some piece of .NET code from "interpreting"
> any piece of text whatsoever, but that wouldn't let that piece of text
> be a "first-class citizen" in the .NET framework -- it could not be
> used to implement classes other components inherit from, etc.  Compiling
> the whatever-text-it-is down to IL is the 'royal road' of .NET
integration,
> and the one ActiveState is taking with their Python.NET, whose beta you
> can download from their site.  Of course, that IL can perfectly well be
> replete with calls to a 'runtime for my special funky language' assembly
> of components -- that's a component-internal implementation decision
> with .NET does not interfere with -- but what happens at a component's
> interface *is* constrained by .NET interoperability rules.
>
> The 'basic premise' that 'compiled down to IL' necessarily means anything
> much from the point of view of performance IS worth questioning.  A piece
> of IL that's little more than a sequence of calls to a runtime assembly
> (an indirect-threaded interpreter...) will probably have performance not
> substantially different from other styles of bytecode-for-interpretation,
> after all.  It seems to me that Python .NET isn't really taking this easy
> way out (just as Jython doesn't), but aiming at a compromise between
> feasibility AND some potential performance improvement; but I have not
> looked deep enough into it to be certain.
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>