[pypy-dev] Questions about the C core

[Christian Tismer]

Marc Recht wrote:
>>> Has anyone thought about features that Python does not have that should
>>> be in Minimal?  My first candidate would be (ducks) macros,
>>
>>
>> as a final user visible feature, I hope not. As an implementation then
>> invisible tool maybe/why not.
> 
> IMHO the user visible language part should be 100% Python compatible. At 
> least this should be the goal. But, in the build process of the Minimal 
> Python core we could (and should?) use feature to simplify the 
> implementation. Like generating source/classes from a formal description 
> (eg. XML).

I have the same goal. I also don't hesitate to use
some abbreviative tools for repeated code, maybe.
But only if it helps to simplify, not to change the
language.
Furthermore, thinking of macros again, they make
less sense for me every time I think it over.
Our final target is an intelligent code generator
which generates optimized code from well-written
Python.
How could a macro system help here? We would instead
loose structure and make optimization harder, since
the macro generated code needs to be analysed
and optimized, later.

That is bullshit, IMHO.

Abstractions, like metaclases, which specialize
themselves into other concrete classes make more
sense to me. This allows to optimize without
loosing structural information.

XML on the other hand, as an intermediate language
or for pickling makes sense to me. At least it is easier
to parse than Python. (But we *have* the parser...)

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