Python and the need for speed

[Rick Johnson]

On Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 1:34:39 PM UTC-5, bartc wrote:
> On 09/04/2017 04:57, Chris Angelico wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 10:20 AM,  <breamoreboy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I've an idea that
> > > http://www.mos6581.org/python_need_for_speed is a week
> > > late for April Fool's but just in case I'm sure that some
> > > of you may wish to comment.
> 
> > In fact, extreme dynamism is baked deep into the language.
> > You'd have to make some fairly sweeping language changes
> > to get any real benefits from restricting things. There
> > are better ways to improve performance, which is why
> > statickification isn't really pursued.
> 
> I have my own interpreted language which I call 'dynamic',
> but compared with Python, code in it might as well be set
> in concrete.

Is this a personal toy, or something that you can share a
link to?

>  > Bye bye namedtuple.
> 
> I'm not completely sure what namedtuples are but they sound
> like some sort of record type. Presumably there is some
> reason why general attributes can't be used. The latter
> sound inefficient and so do the former if they depend on
> advanced dynamism to work.  Now, my language has records
> built-in, and they work extremely well, without using any
> of the dynamic features of Python other than dynamic
> variables as I said.  So such things can be made viable
> with the proper language support rather than relying on
> layers of what I consider unnecessarily esoteric features.
> Get the basics working first.

For all the hype about GvR's "supposed" time machine, we can
see that Python has suffered some major design flaws. And
since Python3000, feature creep has been churning into
overdrive. And not that all these features are bad, but like
you say, many of them seem to working around design faults
rather than repairing them. I mean, fiddlesticks[1], we've
already broken backwards compatibility in a *HUGE* way, so
why not just go back and fix these inherent flaws once and
for all, huh? And it's not like Python can wear the white
dress again -- for one thing, she's put on far too many
pounds since then, and for the other, well kids, you just
can't un-pop a cherry!

[1] I _really_ wanted to use a more powerful word there.