Python IS slow ! [was] Re: Python too slow for real world

[Reimer Behrends]

Paul Prescod (paul at prescod.net) wrote:
> Markus Kohler wrote:
> > You are right that one should choose the right tool for a problem, but
> > I disagree that Python is optimized for the general case. Squeak a free
> > Smalltalk implementation (www.squeak.org), is already much faster ( about
> > 3 times actually )  than python and it has even a true Garbage
> > Collector. 
> 
> This is a little off-topic but I'm curious whether squeak has an embedding
> API. Is there any languge that is as easy to embed as Python, and also has
> full garbage collection?

Ruby. (Was discussed here before.) See

	http://www.netlab.co.jp/ruby/

I think it is actually easier to extend with C code (because you don't
have to keep track of reference counts, among other things). On the
other hand, I could live without some of the more Perl-inspired
constructs in Ruby (nothing against Perl in general, it just happens
that its feature set is just the opposite of what I personally like in
a programming language -- i.e. thousands of different idioms and
extensive use of punctuation symbols).

				Reimer Behrends