[Edu-sig] re : If the PyPy Project ...

[Arthur]

Terry -

>Since I presume the goal of PyPy is to implement *Python* in Python,
>wouldn't the implementation language be rather insignificant to an
>end-user such as an educator?  Why would it be "better" than >CPython?

For whatever reason, the complex built_in  and the cmath module, implemented
in Python, are part of the early pypy codebase. As I had been spending some
time in the complex realm with PyGeo - a simple verions of the complex
realm, as these things go - Laura's post gave me the impetus to try to
plugin the pypy implmentations.

Only got stuck on the typing issue.  My code tests for
instance(object,complex).  The pypy complexobject, unadorned, is a class -
and fails the test.  But that leads me into a deeper look at some of the
pypy codebase, trying to understand a little bit of how this kind of issue
are to be dealt with.  Not that I got there, yet - but I did seem to have an
avenue to explore I would not have with CPython - as someone who doesn't C,
and has no intention of trying, seriously, to do so.

As someone living within the limits of having Python as my only real
language, I think that pypy should open things up for me considerably.  It
will make Python, I believe, a more attractive educational language, because
it will make someone with a strong foundation in Python - as the language of
choice - a more self-sufficient programmer.

Presumably - the point is - there will be less cases where the right
approach would be an extension module in C or C++, and a sense of
fundamental compromise sould one not be equipped to go there.  Many
thousands of folks - using VB and the like - already do involed, highly
performing realworld applications and make nice livings doing so, without
being equipped to do C.  I am thinking that pypy would put Python more
squarely in that "space".
v
Is any of this so, or just hope?

Art