New Python 3.0 string formatting - really necessary?

[bearophileHUGS at lycos.com]

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

Bye,
bearophile