Michael Haggerty <mhag...@alum.mit.edu>:
> There is, of course, the awkward issue of how/when to transition to
> Python 3.x, which is *not* backwards compatible with Python 2.x. I
> expect that when the time comes there will be volunteers (myself
> included) willing to help adapt Python scripts to the new version, but
> the problem shouldn't be minimized.
2to3 actually does a pretty good job. It doesn't reduce the
transition cost to zero, but I find it does reduce that cost to an
easily manageable level even on quite large codebases.
> It would be insane to rewrite performance-critical C code in any
> scripting language, but there is a huge penumbra of code that is not
> performance critical and that mutates rapidly.
Indeed. In the git architecture there is a pretty clear dividing line -
to a first approximation, plumbing should remain C but porcelain should
probably not. (Not that I am advocating forcing such a move - but it would
be good to allow it to happen.)
The 80-20 rule (80% of the execution time is spent in 20% of the code)
helps us here. The *other* 80% of the code can move to a scripting
language with no significant performance loss. To find out what needs
to stay in C, run a profiler!
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
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