[Python-Dev] Pie-thon at OSCON 2004?

[A.M. Kuchling]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 04:45:23PM -0500, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> Have Guido and Dan been practicing their aim with a pie?  The topic of the
> Python/Parrot shootout hasn't come up in awhile.  I thought I'd ask since
> OSCON 2K4 is only a couple weeks away.

An outdated weblog entry I wrote:
http://www.amk.ca/diary/archives/cat_python.html#003176.  I'll try to
write another update once I actually get it to run Python code.

Serious development activity in Parrot CVS started a few days before
the end of June.  At this point there are a few basic data types
(string, int, float, lists, complex), a subset of the built-in
functions (divmod, hex, chr, etc. -- map/filter/reduce are the most
complicated ones implemented), and exceptions work to some degree.  It
can run a version of the pi() function in b0.py that's been rewritten
to not use yield.  Single-parent classes are being implemented at this
point, but it's not clear whether they work at all; ask again in a few
days.

Can they finish within the time available?  I'm not sure; Python is a
relatively small language but it's not *that* small, and there's still
a lot left to do.  The approach being taken is translating the
bytecode; there's a languages/python/piethon.pl script that takes a
.pyc and produces a Parrot assembly file.  There's some subtlety to
invoking it, though, because the PASM produced doesn't actually
assemble for me.  I haven't yet figured out how to run a snippet of
Python code using Parrot, so this assessment comes from looking at the
code.  (This means I obviously don't have any performance numbers
either.)

I forget the terms of the bet; is it running on Python 2.3.4, or the
2.4alpha1 release, or on Python CVS?  Maybe we should check that
2.4CVS hasn't regressed in performance when compared to 2.3.

--amk