embedded python?

[Peter Hansen]

Alexander May wrote:

> One of my concerns is the lack of confidence I'd have in the build.  Any
> hard to diagnose error that arose could potentially be a logic error or an
> interpreter bug (or a hardware bug).  On a six thousand node distributed
> system, I want to be quite sure of the foundation, and minimize possible
> sources of error.   I've never compiled python before.  Is the test suite
> comprehensive enough to justify a high level of confidence in a new build?

You can't necessarily have confidence in someone else's build either,
unless it's very widely used, and used in the same way yours will be
used.  Otherwise you are likely to use functionality that others do
not, and you may still encounter problems.

The test suite is extensive.  Personally, I would have pretty high
confidence in any working port, after some basic testing with sample
code that reflects the sort of thing my application needs to do.

I am, however, pretty used to tracking down compiler bugs and such,
so I'm a little blase about that sort of thing.

> An unexplored suggestion was to use Jython and target an embedded chip
> designed to accelerate Java bytecode.  I know little about Jython or Java
> chips, so I can't yet make any sense of this idea.

My only comment on that is that mixing many different technologies
together will increase the complexity exponentially.  I'd try to
avoid it, at the least for the prototype.  Note also that I'm a very
YAGNI(*) sort now, what with Extreme Programming ideas having seeped
into my head so far.  I tend to believe I'll find ways around any
issues that arise, and generally do...

-Peter