New Python 3.0 string formatting - really necessary?

[MRAB]

bearophileHUGS at lycos.com wrote:
> walterbyrd:
>> As I understand it, that may have been true at one time. But, Ruby 1.9
>> very significantly sped up the language. While Python has been made
>> slower, Ruby has been made much faster.
> 
> I have already answered regarding Python3 in this thread. Regarding
> Ruby you are right, in computer science there are lot of ways to speed
> up things. So it may be quite possible for Ruby to become "faster"
> than CPython.
> For example this may speed up the PythonVM some:
> "Optimizing direct threaded code by selective inlining":
> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.23.8829&rep=rep1&type=pdf
> 
Interesting. The re module uses a form of bytecode. Not sure about the 
relative cost of the dispatch code, though.