In article <mailman.270.1257970526.2873.python-l...@python.org>, Terry Reedy <tjre...@udel.edu> wrote: > >I can imagine a day when code compiled from Python is routinely >time-competitive with hand-written C.
I can't. Too much about the language is dynamic. The untyped variables alone are a killer. int a,b,c; ... a = b + c; In C, this compiles down to just a few machine instructions. In Python, the values in the variables need to be examined *at run time* to determine how to add them or if they can even be added at all. You'll never in a million years get that down to just two or three machine cycles. Yes, technically, the speed of a language depends on its implementation, but the nature of the language constrains what you can do in an implementation. Python the language is inherently slower than C the language, no matter how much effort you put into the implementation. This is generally true for all languages without strongly typed variables. -- -Ed Falk, f...@despams.r.us.com http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list