first release of PyPy

[Anton Vredegoor]

Kay Schluehr wrote:
> Anton Vredegoor wrote:
>
> > I'm not involved in PyPy myself but this would seem a logical
> > possibility. To go a step further, if the compiler somehow would know
> > about the shortest machine code sequence which would produce the
> > desired effect then there would be no reason to limit onself to only
> > those relatively inefficent standard code sequences that are inside
> > system dll's.
>
> Are You shure that this problem is effectively solvable in any
> language? Since You did not precise Your idea I'm not shure whether You
> want to solve the halting-problem in PyPy or not ;)

Since PyPy is covering new territory it seemed important to provide new
ideas so that they have something to look forward to and will not fall
asleep at the entrance of the new area. Maybe I failed with the new
part but at least I tried :-)

Whether they are supposed to solve the halting problem or if that can
reasonably be expected I don't now either. Is it ethical to send people
on an impossible mission in order to harvest the spinoff? Some evil
genius might have created this universe in order to do just that!

However, people posting code to this list are often reminded of other
algorithms (are you sorting this list? why not use quicksort?) so it
seems possible at least for humans to guess the intentions of another
coder sometimes, and provide better code.

Every time something is described at a higher level (these levels
cannot be found within the original system but must be created by a
leap of the imagination or by divine intervention) there seem to be
ways to remove superfluous things and be more effective even at the
lower level.

Anton

'answering all questions destroys the universe?'