On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> wrote:
This is off-topic for this list, but the main problem with PyPy is that
you'll quickly hit a lot of walls when you try to use it for anything
serious in the area. It's true that there is a certain level of
interoperability with CPython extensions, but calling it a "focus area"
makes it sound bigger than it actually is in my ears. Even trying to get
bugs fixed to at least make things work at all often means running against
walls on their side. I can tell, trying to port Cython mostly consisted of
bugging PyPy developers to fix stuff, which took anything from days to
still-not-done, each time. And, by design, PyPy makes it very hard and time
consuming to debug it and to try to fix bugs in their code base.

I take issue with how you've described this, Stefan: I recall many on pypy-dev working with you quite a bit on the Cython port. There are some difficult problems involved and the port is not a main focus of the core PyPy team -- there's only so many free cycles. You should ping us (IRC is great) about any outstanding issues.
 
So, while I agree that PyPy is worth a try in certain application areas,
and can be helpful for some special needs, also in the field of scientific
computing, it's lightyears away from a production-ready state in that area.
It just doesn't integrate with the huge bulk of software that people use in
their daily work. And once you rely on that software, which is hand tuned,
well integrated and real-world proven in so many ways, over the time span
of way more than a decade, the most visible advantage of PyPy to make
Python code run faster becomes almost pointless. In that light, telling
people to try PyPy and to drop (most of) their current ecosystem for it
doesn't really sound helpful and clearly appears outside of the focus of
the web site in question.
 
I disagree that it's pointless. Numba disagrees too: it also attempts to make Python code faster.

PyPy is indeed a work in progress in this area, but that doesn't necessarily preclude it from being included.

--
Philip Jenvey