What's better about Ruby than Python?

[Christian Tismer]

Michele Simionato wrote:

...

> There is only one dominant implementation of Python, CPython.

This is correct, so far. Given some time, this might change.

> All the others try to match it as soon as possible. I expect
 > Jython 2.2 (now > in alpha) will catch up with CPython, at some
 > moment. The goal of PyPy or Stackless is to enhance CPython,
> but taking CPython as base reference. In Scheme there is no
> such a basic reference, I am correct?

Not really.
The goal of Stackless is to enhance CPython, while keeping
maximum compatibility. This is really really hard, due to
the restrictions imposed by the C language.
Jython will probably catch up, if somebody is going to
feed Samuele, who really needs support (hint! hint!).
Psyco, in its current state, is also bound to CPython and
tries to enhance it (with remarkable success).

But PyPy, after all, tries to be a lot more.
It finally wants to replace the CPython source by its own.
It wants to be a generic Python platform that allows to deduce
all of the other variants at once. Or, more generally speaking,
it tries to allow all of these to be implemented, using its
generic framework. None of these projects has tried it so far,
but my first goal next sprint is to investigate what it takes
to make PyPy stackless, and which (of several possible) approaches
to use.
PyPy wants to subsume Stackless, Jython, Psyco and some more,
at the same time. And all the developers of these extensions
to CPython are in the PyPy group, not to forget about Guido,
himself, who is happy to play with new alternatives.

So think of PyPy as the level of abstraction that CPython never will
be able to reach. (I really hope to reach it menatally all the
time, since this is not trivial :)
It is one of PyPy's goal to be able to reduce itself to an efficient
variant of CPython, with the hope to be even more efficient.
But understand this as one of the visions that keeps us going,
and the targets are months and years away. But we will reach something.
PyPy has the best developers I could think of (well, some are
missing whom I know well, too, and I would drop out for them to
be there, hi Tim).

> --- Currently looking for a job ---

Me too, unfortunately :-)

ciao - chris

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