[pypy-dev] Comparing PyPy with CLR

[Carl Friedrich Bolz]

Hi Jiwon!

2006/3/7, Jiwon Seo <seojiwon at gmail.com>:
> It was nice that I could meet some of you guys at the PyCon, and the sprint.
>
> I have a question related to PyPy's goal, etc; it might sound a little
> bit provocative, but that's not my intention at all. It's for me to
> explain other people the value of PyPy project.
>
> Anyway, I'll just shoot it :) Comparing PyPy to CLR,  what is the
> strength of PyPy with respect to multi language support? CLR supports
> Common Type System and Common Intermediate Language, and with these
> CLR supports interoperability between several languages like
> (Iron)Python, VB, C#, etc. PyPy (kind of?) supports interoperability
> as well, but in different way; by having multiple objectspace and
> stack machine operator(or interpreter) However, I can't really explain
> the strength of PyPy in this case. Can anyone tell me about this? (or
> anything in general about PyPy being better approach than CLR)

I think the basic answer is that "the PyPy way" does not force you to
use the type system and byte codes provided by the CLR but allows for
a more "free style" integration. This is especially important if the
languages you are interested don't really match the CLR model well.
Using PyPy would allow you to do a much tighter integration of the
languages -- although admittedly in a maybe more ad-hoc way.

In addition you have advantages stemming from the fact that many of
PyPy's features are really transforming your interpreter without you
having to explicitely add code. For example you get continuations for
free by using the stackless code, and hopefully eventually a JIT as
well. Of course it is very much unclear whether what the 
JIT-generator would do with two interpreters in the same executable
and what you would have to do to make that practical :-).

Cheers,

Carl Friedrich