Future of Pypy?

[jkn]

On Sunday, 22 February 2015 12:45:15 UTC, Dave Farrance  wrote:
> As an engineer, I can quickly knock together behavioural models of
> electronic circuits,  complete units, and control systems in Python, then
> annoyingly in a few recent cases, have to re-write in C for speed.
> 
> I've tried PyPy, the just-in-time compiler for Python, and that is
> impressively, hugely fast in comparison, but it's no good making these
> models if I can't display the results in a useful way, and at the moment
> PyPy just doesn't have the huge range of useful time-saving libraries that
> CPython has.  It's still quicker to do a re-write in the more cumbersome C
> than try to work with PyPy because C, like CPython, also has many useful
> libraries.
> 
> A few years back, I recall people saying that PyPy was going to be the
> future of Python, but it seems to me that CPython still has the lion's
> share of the momentum, is developing faster and has ever more libraries,
> while PyPy is struggling to get enough workers to even get Numpy
> completed.
> 
> Maybe there's not enough people like me that have really felt the need for
> the speed.  Or maybe it's simply the accident of the historical
> development path that's set-in-stone an interpreter rather than a JIT.
> Anybody got a useful perspective on this?

I'm curious what ...behavioural... models you are creating quickly in Python that then need rewriting in C for speed. SPICE? some other CAD? Might be interesting to learn more about what and how you are actually doing.

How about running your front end (simulation) work in PyPy, and the backend display work on CPython, if there are some missing features in PyPy that you need. This may be more or less easy depending on your requirements and any intermediate format you have.

Or you could offer to assist in the PyPy porting? Or express an interest in specific libraries being ported?

    Cheers
    Jon N