We didn't get off to the best start on the comp.lang.python list, so I'd like to reintroduce myself to you. In this posting I'll discuss my background and how I might contribute to the psyco project. Background I have been programming for 35+ years, first in assembly and C, then in C++ and Objective-C, and finally and most joyously in Python. I've used the NextStep/Yellow Box/Cocoa, Borland C++ Builder, wxWindows and tcl/tk class frameworks. I am familiar with the Smalltalk and Java class libraries. My primary interests have always been: 1) the programming process itself and 2) getting maximum speed out of programs. One of my earliest projects was improving the speed of a screen driver by about a factor of 10. Doing so changed qualitatively how people interacted with the screen. Sometime in the 80's Leor Zolman gave me the source code of the BDS-C compiler to study. For several years this was the fastest C compiler available on micros (as we called PC's then), and to this day is one of the fastest compilers ever built. Studying this compiler was a revelation for me: it broke all the rules about compilers I learned in graduate school, and broke them very well. I realized then that much of my career would be unlearning what I thought I knew :-) In the 90's I designed and built a commercial optimizing C compiler. This was a technical success: it produced very good m68000 code and did it faster than the Borland C compiler. It was not a commercial success as the company folded before the compiler was released. The compiler was not particularly elegant; I am not a compiler expert, and I _do_ have real experience. I am the BDFL of the Leo project. Leo is a major Open Source project written in Python. The Leo project takes up the bulk of my time, and I would gladly give some time to this project. I am also the creator of the pl68k programming language and compiler, the Sherlock tracing system, and the ancient RED text editor. With the exception of the C compiler (and related linker and file system), everything I have done has been Open Software. How I might help I have lots of experience with making code work fast and I have a number of ideas about generalizing and improving psycho... I would be willing to help improve the documentation of psyco. I think psyco promises a huge win for Python, and I would like to see it explained so many people can understand and improve it. I have created a Leo outline of an old version of psyco, and I would be happy to convert all or parts of this project to Leo. Leo is an excellent way of organizing, studying and presenting complex code. Whether the psyco project chooses to adopt Leo "officially" is not for me to say, and I would recommend this project experiment with using Leo. Oh yes, I have a Python script that helps with conversion of C code to Python. It simply hacks on the syntax, removing braces, semicolons, type declarations, converting argument lists to def statements, that kind of thing. The script is buried in the source code for Leo. Edward -------------------------------------------------------------------- Edward K. Ream email: edream@tds.net Leo: Literate Editor with Outlines Leo: http://personalpages.tds.net/~edream/front.html --------------------------------------------------------------------