Python and Flaming Thunder

[bruno.desthuilliers at gmail.com]

On 15 mai, 19:30, Lie <Lie.1... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 15, 4:08 am, "bruno.desthuilli... at gmail.com"
>
>
>
> <bruno.desthuilli... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 14 mai, 08:08, Lie <Lie.1... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On May 14, 12:51 pm, Lie <Lie.1... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > And your 8 by 8 cross compiler doesn't impress me at all, they're all
> > > > based on x86/IA-32 architecture which is quite similar, no PowerPC,
> > > > SPARC, ARM, no other CISC or RISC architecture. And your compiler is a
> > > > single language compiler instead of three dimensional compiler that
> > > > GCC is (cross platform, cross target platform, cross language).
>
> > > And to add, I also need to mention that Python doesn't need to be
> > > compiled at all,
>
> > No language needs compilation - it's an implementation problem, not a
> > language problem. Now all the Python's implementations I know do use
> > compilation (to byte-code).
> > > its py and pyo file is architecture independent.
>
> > True, but this is not strictly related to being compiled or not.
>
> It's true, it's implementation problem whether a language is compiled
> or not, but what I was emphasizing was that Python's code is
> architecture independent at all stages (that is visible to the user
> and the programmer), on the other hand, a compiled code is a compiled
> code is a compiled code,

Ever wondered what all these .pyc files were ?

> it cannot be architecture independent without
> packing multiple binaries in the same executable (like in Macintosh's
> universal binary) or using an emulation (with huge overheads) or at
> least using a compatibility layer (which doesn't always work) and all
> this is done in the layer that is visible to user and programmer
> (programmer having to compile against everything and user having to
> download the correct executable) instead of being done in a platform
> independent way that interpreted language like Python have.

Python is not interpreted, because being interpreted is a feature of
an implementation, not of a language. And so far, no known Python
implementation is (strictly speaking) interpreted - they all compile
to byte-code. "compiled" doesn't necessarily imply "compiled to
platform native binary code", you know.

Ok, this may look like a bit on the splitting hairs side. But may I
remind you that to run ever a .pyc file, you do need to have the
Python runtime (VM + quite a lot of libs) installed one way (normal
install) or another (packed in something that looks like an ordinary
"executable" - whatever this means for the target platform) ? OTHO,
it's true that a .pyc file is platform-independant  - it just requires
the correct versions of quite a lot of platform-dependant binaries.
Wait... Isn't this code some kind of a "visible to the user and
programmer" "compatibilty layer" ?