[Python-Dev] comments on PEP 219

[Uche Ogbuji]

> Here are some comments on Gordon's new draft of PEP 219 and the
> stackless dev day discussion at Spam 9.
> 
> I left the dev day discussion with the following takehome message:
> There is a tension between Stackless Python on the one hand and making
> Python easy to embed in and extend with C programs on the other hand.
> The PEP describes this as the major difficulty with C Python.  I won't
> repeat the discussion of the problem there.

You know, even though I would like to have some of the Stackless features, my 
skeptical reaction to some of the other Grand Ideas circulating at IPC9, 
including static types leads me to think I might not be thinking clearly on 
the Stackless question.

I think that if there is no way to address the many important concerns raised 
by people at the Stackless session (minus the "easy to learn" argument IMO), 
Stackless is probably a bad idea to shove into Python.

I still think that the Stackless execution structure would be a huge 
performance boost in many XML processing tasks, but that's not worth making 
Python intractable for extension writers.

Maybe it's not so bad for Stackless to remain a branch, given how closely 
Christian can work with Pythonlabs.  The main problem is the load on 
Christian, which would be mitigated as he gained collaborators.  The other 
problem would be that interested extension writers might need to maintain 2 
code-bases as well.  Maybe one could develop some sort of adaptor.

Or maybe Stackless should move to core, but only in P3K in which extension 
writers should be expecting weird and wonderful new models, anyway (right?)


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
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