[pypy-dev] Question on the future of RPython

[Douglas McNeil]

> No other python implementation can convert python programs to executables.

There's shedskin, which is actually very good as these things go:

http://code.google.com/p/shedskin/

Like RPython, you have to write in a small subset of python which can
be a little frustrating once you've gotten used to pythonic freedom.
But I've found it very useful for some short numerical codes (putting
on my OEIS associate editor hat).  And Cython is pretty powerful these
days.

ObPyPy: the other day I had cause to run a very short, unoptimized,
mostly integer-arithmetic code.  With shedskin, it took between ~42s
(with ints) and ~1m43 (with longs), as compared with only ~3m30 or so
to run under pypy.  That's only a factor of two (if I'd needed longs).
 Both could be much improved, and a lower-level version in C would
beat them both, but I was very impressed by how little difference
there was.  Major props!

For numerics it'd be interesting to have a JIT option which didn't
care about compilation times, and instead of generating assembly
itself generated assembly-like C which was then delegated to an
external compiler.


Doug

-- 
Department of Earth Sciences
University of Hong Kong