[Python-Dev] Python 3 optimizations continued...

[Eli Bendersky]

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 08:57, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>wrote:

> Nick Coghlan wrote:
>
>  Personally, I *like* CPython fitting into the "simple-and-portable"
>> niche in the Python interpreter space.
>>
>
> Me, too! I like that I can read the CPython source and
> understand what it's doing most of the time. Please don't
> screw that up by attempting to perform heroic optimisations.
>
> --
>

Following this argument to the extreme, the bytecode evaluation code of
CPython can be simplified quite a bit. Lose 2x performance but gain a lot of
readability. Does that sound like a good deal? I don't intend to sound
sarcastic, just show that IMHO this argument isn't a good one. I think that
even clever optimized code can be properly written and *documented* to make
the task of understanding it feasible. Personally, I'd love CPython to be a
bit faster and see no reason to give up optimization opportunities for the
sake of code readability.

Eli
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