As it is now, Python running on 64-bit Windows behaves differently (in terms of bits for the Python's integer) than it is behaving in other platforms.  I assume that the Python C code is using the type 'long' instead of something like the C99 int64_t.  Since Microsoft is using the LLP64 model and everyone else is using the LP64, code using the C 'long' type would mean something different on Windows than Unix-like platforms.  Isn't that unfortunate? 

Would it not be better to hide the difference at Python level?  

Or is it done this way to allow existing C extension modules to work the way they were and request Python code that depends on integer sizes to check sys.maxint?

Also, I would imagine that the performance delta between a Windows 32-bit Python versus 64-bit Python is not as big as it would be on a Unix computer.  As far as I can se Python-64 bits on Windows 64-bit OS has a larger address space and probably does not benefit from anything else. Has anyone have data on this?

Thanks