Suggesion for an undergrad final year project in Python

[Alan Kennedy]

[Sridhar]
> I am doing my undergrade CS course.  I am in the final year, and would
> like to do my project involving Python.  Our instructors require the
> project to have novel ideas.  Can the c.l.p people shed light on this
> topic?

PyPy is chock full of novel ideas, given that two of the main developers 
are Armin Rigo (of psyco fame) and Christian Tismer (stackless python).

PyPy is a project, which has obtained European funding, to reimplement 
python *in python*, a very laudable goal.

http://codespeak.net/pypy/

Psyco is a "specialising compiler" for cpython, which essentially does 
something like just-in-time compilation, but with a different slant.

http://psyco.sourceforge.net/introduction.html

Armin's paper on the techniques used should make an interesting read for 
your CS professors:

http://psyco.sourceforge.net/theory_psyco.pdf

Stackless python has support for full coroutines, as opposed to 
cpython's current support for semi-coroutines. In the past, Stackless 
used to support continuations, but no longer does because of the 
complexity of adapting the cpython interpreter to support them. But 
Christian's implementation experience will hopefully guide PyPy in the 
direction of supporting both coroutines and continuations.

http://www.stackless.com/

As for what you could do in the PyPy project, I have no suggestions 
since I am not involved in the project. But I am sure that a message to 
pypy-dev will elicit plenty of ideas.

http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-dev

Lastly, the jython project is undergoing a bit of renaissance at the 
moment, and there's plenty of work to be done. A message to jython-dev 
volunteering time is unlikely to go unnoticed. Particularly, the parser, 
code generation and AST are areas which require a fair amount of rework. 
But there is less opportunity to use "novel ideas" in jython, so it may 
not interest your professors, unless you have some novel ideas of your 
own to bring to the project.

http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jython-dev

How much time, over how long a period, do you have available for your 
project?

Best of luck,

-- 
alan kennedy
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