[Python-Dev] ob_refcnt access

[Tim Peters]

[Christian Tismer]
> ...
> I can say this, since I have been through a week of debugging
> now, and I can now publish
>
>        full blown first class continuations for Python
>
> yes I'm happy - chris

You should be!  So how come nobody else is <wink/frown>?

Let's fire some imagination here:  without the stinkin' C stack snaking its
way thru everything, then with the exception of external system objects
(like open files), the full state of a running Python program is comprised
of objects Python understands and controls.

So with some amount of additional pain we could pickle them.  And unpickle
them.  Painlessly checkpoint a long computation for possible restarting?
Freeze a program while it's running on your mainframe, download it to your
laptop and resume it while you're on the road?  Ship a bug report with the
computation frozen right before the error occurs?  Take an app with gobs of
expensive initialization, freeze it after it's "finally ready to go", and
ship the latter instead?  Capture the state of an interactive session for
later resumption?  Etc.

Not saying those are easy, but getting the C stack out of the way means they
move from impossible to plausible.  Maybe it would help get past the
Schemeophobia <wink> if, instead of calling them "continuations", you called
'em "platform-independent potentially picklable threads".

pippt-sounds-as-good-as-it-reads<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim