[Python-Dev] Parallel pyc construction

[Guido van Rossum]

> I hadn't considered the option of not making .pyc files, though I've
> complained about .pyo files in the past with distutils, but now
> compilation is optional there. The .pyc and .pyo files certainly
> clutter a directory. If there is no significant performance
> improvement for loading and using .pyc files or the difference is
> only significant for large files or certain code constructs, maybe
> they shouldn't be automatically created. I guess this is another
> area for test cases.

Oh, in most cases .pyc/.pyo files *do* give significant speedup; the
parser + bytecode compiler are really slow.  It's just that Paul's
machine is so fast and his program runs so long that he doesn't care.
But many people do.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)