Hello,
On Tue, 1 Dec 2020 16:41:36 +0000 David Mertz mertz@gnosis.cx wrote:
On Tue, Dec 1, 2020 at 10:38 AM Paul Sokolovsky pmiscml@gmail.com wrote:
And the const is the cheapest way to make Python a tad faster (for sure open up possibilities for further optimizations), which should be accessible even to such an old clumsy behemoth as CPython.
This is at least the 50th idea I've seen that will "with absolute certainty make Python faster"
That's why I don't make such claims, and instead making a very different one: that idea with absolute certainty will remove *one* of 50 problems which keep Python slow.
Hard-boiled pragmatists among us won't get it, but it's a true intellectual pleasure to be left with 49 problems instead of 50.
Besides, if every advanced Python programmer peeled one of such problems, before waving bye-bye and flying over to Haskell, we'd already have a fast Python. In that regard, I continue a well-established Python tradition. (And indeed, we have many fast Pythons, working under various conditions. We still need to pull further as a community to go over the summit where "a Python" is by default "fast", not "slow").
... where the first 49 failed to do so, often despite significant institutional investment in money and skilled developers.
Obviously, there *have* been actual speed improvements. But they rarely seem to follow the "obvious intuitions" of speculation on python-ideas.
Challenge accepted - let's on python-ideas speculate on actual speed improvements, not wait with popcorn for "significant institutional investment" (can do both).
Somehow "dire" doesn't strike me as the right word.... Maybe you were looking for "conceivably useful in niche cases."?
Perhaps we can bargain on "really useful in many cases".
I've still yet to see an example that is very compelling. Not speed, I'll treat that with skepticism. Just in terms of notably improved code clarity.
That's in the eye of the beholder, I'm afraid. So, if you don't want to be convinced of those clarity improvements, you'll never be.