[Python-Dev] Re: Re: native code compiler? (or, OCaml vs. Python)

[Dan Sugalski]

At 5:55 PM -0500 1/30/03, Terry Reedy wrote:
>"Graham Guttocks" <graham_guttocks@yahoo.co.nz> wrote in message
>news:20030130211504.810.qmail@web10302.mail.yahoo.com...
>>  Dan Sugalski <dan@sidhe.org> wrote:
>>  >
>>  > It's actually not all that tough
>>
>>  Oh? Guido seems to disagree with you.
>
>No contradiction or disagreement.  It is not all that tough to do
>something of limited benefit, such as pre-interpreting Python byte
>codes into a series of function calls in some
>compilable-to-machine-code language.  It is *must* harder to do
>something much more useful, which is all Guido would be interested in.

You underestimate the benefit in the first case, and the second case 
isn't really much more difficult. I expect one of the several reasons 
that nobody's pursued this is that the current interpreter is deemed 
fast enough, which is a perfectly good reason to not bother going 
further.
-- 
                                         Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan@sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
                                       teddy bears get drunk