[pypy-dev] Threaded interpretation (was: Re: compiler optimizations: collecting ideas)

[Armin Rigo]

Hi Paolo,

Just a quick note as an answer to your long and detailed e-mail (thanks
for it, btw).

On the whole you're making quite some efforts to get Python fast,
starting with a subset of Python and adding feature after feature until
it is more or less complete, while benchmarking at every step. This is
not a new approach: it has been tried before for Python.  Usually, this
kind of project ends up being not used and forgotten, because it's
"only" 80% or 90% compatible but not 99% -- and people care much more,
on average, about 99% compatibility than about 50% performance
improvement.  PyPy on the other hand starts from the path of 99%
compatibility and then tries to improve performance (which started as
10000 times slower... and is now roughly 1.5 or 2 times slower).

Just saying that the approach is completely different...  And I have not
much interest in it -- because you change the language and have to start
again from scratch.  A strong point of PyPy is that you don't have to;
e.g. we have, in addition to the Python interpreter, a JavaScript, a
Smalltalk, etc...


A bientot,

Armin.