Why not a Python compiler?

[mani]

On Feb 6, 2:43 am, "Luis M. González" <luis... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5 feb, 05:19, Santiago  Romero <srom... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >  ( Surely if this question has been asked for a zillion of times... )
> >  ( and sorry for my english! )
>
> >  I'm impressed with python. I'm very happy with the language and I
> > find Python+Pygame a very powerful and productive way of writing 2D
> > games. I'm not, at this moment, worried about execution speed of the
> > small game I'm working on (it runs at full 60 fps even in an old AMD-
> > K6 450 Laptop computer), but I continue asking me the same question:
>
> >  Why not a Python COMPILER?
>
> >  It would be very nice to be able to output Linux, MAC or Windows
> > binaries of compiled (not bytecompiled) code. It would run faster, it
> > will be smaller in size (I think) and it will be easy to distribute to
> > people not having python installed. Yes, I know about py2exe, but I'm
> > not sure if that's the right aproach.
>
> >  So, what's wrong with compiling python?
>
> >  Maybe is not possible due to nature of the language? Is just a
> > decision?
>
> >  What do you think about this?
>
> There are some projects aimed to speed up Python by a large margin.
> Right now you can use psyco, which is considered to be feature
> complete, and whose future relies on the Pypy project.
>
> Pypy is a very ambitious project and it aims, amongst many other
> goals, to provide a fast just-in-time python implementation.
> They even say that the "secret goal is being faster than c, which is
> nonsense, isn´t it?" (I still didn´t get the joke though...).
>
> And finally, you have ShedSkin, a project developed by one lonely and
> heroic coder (Mark Dufour).
> Shedskin aims at being a static python compiler, which can translate a
> subset of python to stand alone executables.
> It also can compile extension modules for cpython.
> It works by translating python to c++ and then to machine code.
> The python code must be done in a static way (getting rid of dynamic
> features like, for example, not asigning different types to the same
> variable).
>
> Luis

and Take a look at this page if you look for a plan to develop a fast
python program, you wont regret it.
http://ondrej.certik.cz/development/

Mani