Hi Martijn,
since I am in a very nitpicking mode...
Martijn Faassen wrote:
holger krekel wrote:
[snip]
PyPy is not primarily - at least not only - about making
Python faster although many people like to view it this way :-)
This correction is a bit confusing... It is not surprising that people
view "a faster Python" as a primary goal of your project, as that's the
message that's been spread repeatedly by you all over the years:
"The PyPy project aims at producing a flexible and fast Python
implementation. The guiding idea is to translate a Python-level
description of the Python language itself to lower level languages.
Rumors have it that the secret goal is being faster-than-C which is
nonsense, isn't it?"
Note that it says "fexible and fast": fexible comes first. And we
explicitely say that the faster-than-C goal is nonsense.
and
"In the next step of the project, we will generate C code or machine
code from the source of Pypy, thereby reducing the speed penalty.
"reducing the speed penalty" does not imply being very fast. It just
means being not so slow.
Later in the project, we will introduce optimisation steps that should
make Pypy run faster than CPython."
and
"Psyco is a Python extension module which can massively speed up the
execution of any Python code.
...
The future of Psyco now lies in the PyPy project, which according to
plan will provide a good base for a Python interpreter with better and
well-integrated Psyco-like techniques as soon as 2006."
"a good base" does not necessarily mean as fast as Psyco is now.
I certainly hope that your "not primarily - at least not only" doesn't
indicate that the goal of making Python faster is slowly becoming less
important to you all, as I'd very much like a faster Python, and more
flexibility of implementation is, while of tremendous personal interest
to me, not one of much business interest in the foreseeable future,
which means it's unlikely I'll get to play with PyPy much unless it
offers performance benefits.
I realize that of course that flexibility has always been a primary goal
of PyPy as well; obviously speed isn't the *only* goal of the project,
but the flexibility goal now dominates and a faster Python is indeed not
of primary importance to the project, I would suggest you revise the
previous statements, which make it rather likely people will get this
wrong impression.
Holger's statement is very important. At the moment most people have the
notion that PyPy is mainly about speed. But the really exciting fact
about PyPy is its flexibility, therefore it makes sense to advertise the
flexibility goals a bit (even if that means diminishing the speed goal
in one single mail to pypy-dev). Of course, achieving high speed is a
worthwhile goal but this goal can be reached _because of_ the
flexibility of PyPy (not the other way round).
:-)
Cheers,
Carl Friedrich
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