Assorted Questions regarding the future of Python...

[Andy Robinson]

"Mark Hammond" <mhammond at skippinet.com.au> wrote:

>> From: python-list-admin at python.org
>> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Rob Hodges
>>
>> Unless something has changed dramatically since I last used windoze,
>> VB is not compiled (in the sense of native machine code) any more
>than
>> a frozen python program; rather, VB "executables" have a small
>header
>> of native code that launches the vbrunxxx.dll (interpreter) to run
>the
>> bytecode that makes up the rest of the file.  Which is more or less
>
>Actually, things have changed.  The latest version of VB has an option
>to compile to native machine code.  This feature was created more from
>a "check-box marketting" POV than anything else (ie, Delphi did it, so
>VB decided it must too!)
>
>Mark.
When VB's native compilation came out, some Delphi people were quick
to time it and discovered that Delphi was still about 10x faster for
typed math and indexing operations, although the benefits disappeared
when dealing with variants or (as you do most of the time) COM APIs to
other things.  If they read things right, it does compile, but not
desperately intelligently.

I haven't done any benchmarking myself, but when I installed VB6 I
didn't exactly leap off my seat at the speed increase.  

Andy