Jan. 30, 2018
11:34 p.m.
It's easier to make a good language fast than it is to make a fast language good. It's easier to hack a compiler or an interpreter to run slow code faster than it is to hack the human brain to understand confusing code more easily. So I think the smart move is to take the languages that have intrinsically good design from cognitive/semantic perspective (such as Python) and support that good design with performant implementations.
A lot of smart people have worked on this — and this is where we are. It turns out that keeping Python’s fully dynamic nature while making it run faster if hard! Maybe if more time/money/brains were thrown at cPython, it could be made to run much faster — but it doesn’t look good. -CHB