[pypy-dev] a faster Python not a primary goal of PyPy?

[Christian Tismer]

Martijn Faassen wrote:

> Christian Tismer wrote:
> [snip]
> 
>> That's the point. Not prioritizing speed is fine, but it
>> does not allow us to be remarkably slower. Being of competitive
>> speed and then more flexible is a must. If we are slower, the
>> market will not consider us at all.
> 
> 
> That's true, and that's a useful clarification. It's still different 
> from the impression you're giving out, where you're strongly implying at 
> least to me that speed will be significantly *faster* eventually with 
> PyPy. Then again, it's forgivable that some hype is used to attract 
> interest to the project.

I thik I'm the worst speed junkie in the project, and I'm holding
my breath a little until I'm convinced that we can be fast.
ATM I'm quite vague about that, because of the complexity of
crucial parts of our system, and the fact that I don't understand
how we are going to translate that into speedy code without
very high level optimization techniques. I simply can't tell
whether we can reach this without major hand-rewriting or whether
we can gather the missing speed factor by applying JIT technology.
I always thought that the initial big step of creating an initial
binary of reasonable speed would be an easy, first step.

But it turned out to be a huge step which is by far not in the shape
it should be. This amount of my misestimation makes me nervous and
stops me from praising PyPy's speed all too loudly.

On the other hand, we have extremely efficient results on the low
level side. RPython programs have been shown to become possibly
very fast. This is an area where I have no doubt making promises,
and that's why I proposed to put some more effort there and at least
provide a tool to produce fast extension modules from RPython, soon.
This is also the reason why I want to make RPython more complete
and easier to use.

For sure we never have put any hype onto PyPy just to make it more
attractive. We learned that flexibility and speed are not trivial
to marry, and we have proven our claims about flexibility, but
unfortunately not yet on speed. I would really hate to retract
this claim. ATM, there is simply no prognosis possible.

cheers - chris

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