Lua is faster than Fortran???

[Felix]

On Jul 4, 11:25 am, David Cournapeau <courn... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 12:00 AM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain <da... at druid.net> wrote:
> > I wish it was orders of magnitude faster for web development.  I'm just
> > saying that places where we need compiled language speed that Python
> > already has that in C.
>
> Well, I wish I did not have to use C, then :) For example, as a
> contributor to numpy, it bothers me at a fundamental level that so
> much of numpy is in C.

This is something that I have been thinking about recently. Python has
won quite a following in the scientific computing area, probably
especially because of great libraries such as numpy, scipy, pytables
etc. But it also seems python itself is falling further and further
behind in terms of performance and parallel processing abilities. Of
course all that can be fixed by writing C modules (e.g. with the help
of cython), but that weakens the case for using python in the first
place.
For an outsider it does not look like a solution to the GIL mess or a
true breakthrough for performance are around the corner (even though
there seem to be many different attempts at working around these
problems or helping with parts). Am I wrong? If not, what is the
perspective? Do we need to move on to the next language and loose all
the great libraries that have been built around python?

Felix