2**HUGENUMBER Why not optimise it?

[Tim Peters]

[Mike C. Fletcher]
> ...
> Apparently the area of long-int-optimisation is just too well-trod to
> elicit much interest among the general populace.

Long-int speedups didn't interest the general public ten years ago, either.
It's a specialty market, and one well served by GMP (for which at least two
viable Python wrappers currently exist).

> Tim's rather busy these days.  I suppose the days of timbot postings
> that take 2 hours to read (what with tracking down all the references
> given and learning exotic CS concepts) are a thing of the past.

That's for sure!  I had a lot more time to give to Python before I got a job
putatively working on it <0.3 wink>.  Now it's mostly my job to sabotage
people if I suspect they may scowl at Guido when he's not looking.  Also, I
read, to dream up gratuitous ways to break working code for no reason at
all.  It's a living.

> Still a fun person, but now more of an adult figure, distant,
> authoritative :o) ;) .

But still vicious!  I haven't lost any any truly important virtue.

> Life continues on.  Someday I too will need to leave
> Never-Never-Land, but darn it, I'll fight it all the way.

I've seen Peter Pan too, and there wasn't a long-int exponentiation in the
whole story.  Nested tuples, yes, but no truly big numbers.  Neither decimal
points nor implied binary points.  So I conclude you got into this mess by
poking your head *out* of Never-Never Land!  Believe me, you don't even want
to *see* what goes on out here.

grownups-everywhere-you-turn-and-some-even-smell-bad-ly y'rs  - tim