pyvm -- faster python

[Terry Reedy]

"Stelios Xanthakis" <sxanth at ceid.upatras.gr> wrote in message 
news:42807E31.8020905 at ceid.upatras.gr...
>> Maybe you can explain us why it is so fast, and/or maybe you can work
>> with the other developers to improve the speed of the normal CPython,
>> this can require equal or less work for you, and it can produce more
>> long-lasting results/consequences for your work.
>>
>
> The reason is that it's built from the scratch.
> Guido would disagree with that, see py-dev thread:

Guido, like me, believes in being correct before being fast.

> http://www.mail-archive.com/python-dev@python.org/msg01225.html
>
>
> There *are* alternative ways to do some things in the vm and Joel
> is simply wrong:)

The smiley doesn't negate your silliness.  Joel explicitly talked about 
complex, mature, debugged, in-use systems, with actual or potential 
competitive replacements, not laboratory development toys and prototypes. 
Three years between releases *is* a long time.  And the Python codebase 
*does* embody a lot of hard-won knowledge, hardly available elsewhere, that 
should not be tossed.  A particular example is how to get certain things to 
work across numerous platforms in the face of ambuiguity and 'not defined' 
behavior in the C standard and implementations.

Its possible that some future reference Python will be based on a new, 
built-from-scratch core developed *in parallel* with current Python.  But 
that will only happen after it has been tested on a hundred different 
platforms with a hundred different applications and packages (as happens, 
more or less, with each new CPython release).

Terry J. Reedy