[ANNOUNCE] Garbage collection for Python

[Christian Tismer]

Quinn Dunkan wrote:
> 
> >> - Even so, Chris and I agree that continuations should eventually
> >>   be completely hidden from the user, since it's so incredibly
> >>   obscure, hardly anyone will understand it. Not good for CP4E ;-)
> >
> >Today I'm saying so. But I think there will come a time
> >where people are told "look, a continuation is as simple as 1+1",
> >and they'll say "sure? I thought a co is simpler."
> 
> I'm not sure I understand correctly, but does "completely hidden from the
> user" mean "only visible (in the "raw" form) from C"?  In that case, I think
> it should still be visible from python.

Right. One should perhaps not advertize continuations in the first
place, until people know them from school.
That's why we try to build really useful stuff from them, familiar
and understandable for many people, like threads.
This also means, after some stabilization phase and iterations,
most of these applications on top of co's will get optimized
back into C, dealing with the co stuff from there.
This doesn't mean to remove the co's Python interface,
but to improve and simplify it further.

> I don't see how it's different from metaclasses or the "new" module:  just
> put big red stickers on it.  It'd be nice to have around for people who want
> to experiment, write obfuscated code, or maybe even write a useful
> continuation-using extension.  I don't think there's much trouble with people
> abusing the Beaudry hook to explode anyone's head other than their own.

Thank you for reminding me that I have to write a real C interface
now.

ciao - chris

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