Native Code vs. Python code for modules

[srepmub]

> ShedSkinwill probably have scaling problems: as the program size
> grows it may need too much time to infer all the types. The author has
> the strict policy of refusing any kind of type annotation, this make
> it unpractical.

well, I admit I really don't like manual type annotations (unless for
documentation purposes). it seems a much nicer (..pythonic) approach
to just get type information from a profiler. if I had four hands (and
two brains), shedskin would probably already include one.

that said, I know of several ways to improve the scalability
shedskin's type analysis itself, and I might still pursue those. but I
think, in combination with a profiler, things should scale pretty well
already.. certainly enough to compile most smallish programs/extension
modules of up to a few thousands lines.

> And, despite your interest inShedSkin, so far very few people have
> given a hand actually developing SS (I think partially

well, it's been quite a few people actually, about 15 that have
contributed substantial improvements. of course doing a compiler like
this is probably more than 10 person-years of work, so I could always
use more help.

becauseShedSkinPython sources aren't much hackable. This is very bad
for an
> OpenSource project), so I think the author now has lost part of the

I think they are reasonably hackable for the most part, and this can
only improve. in the beginning I had little documentation, and there
was just this 7000-line Python file :-) now things are more split up,
and I even added documentation recently to each part. yes, type
inference will always be hard to hack on, but that's only one part.
the C++ side, where I can arguably use most help, and which consists
of more than half of the code, has always been easily hackable.

> will to develop this project (but probably we'll see one of two more
> versions).

I have my ups and downs of course, but at the moment I'm quite
enthousiastic about the whole thing, in part because people are
actually contributing. a new release is coming up, with support for
datetime and ConfigParser among many other improvements/fixes, and
there is a much faster set implementation in the pipeline. at the
moment, I have no plans to halt development at all.

> For me so far the most viable way to produce a faster Python system
> seems a version of CPython with Cython and something Psyco-like built-
> in (and a built-in compiler on Windows, like MinGW 4.2.1), maybe with
> some syntax support in the Python language, allowing to mix statically
> compiled Python code with dynamically compiled Python code in an easy
> way (as CLisp sometimes does).

shedskin can of course generate extension modules (shedskin -e), that
can be imported from larger Python programs. it's a bit clumsy, as
only builtins can be passed to/from shedskin, and everything (args,
return values) is copied recursively, but it can be quite useful
already. and of course it can only improve as well..


mark.