What If Python Replaced Elisp?

[Fredrik Lundh]

Jon K Hellan <hellan at acm.org> wrote:
> This example is from ch. 14 of the Emacs Lisp Reference manual:
>
>      (defun silly-loop (n)
>        "Return time before and after N iterations of a loop."
>        (let ((t1 (current-time-string)))
>          (while (> (setq n (1- n))
>                    0))
>          (list t1 (current-time-string))))
>
> (Automatically byte compiled) Python: 280 000 iterations/s

interesting.  I get:

  File "bzzt.py", line 1
    (defun silly-loop (n)
               ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

> Byte compiled Emacs Lisp:             520 000 it/s
> Byte compiled Xemacs Lisp:            820 000 it/s
> Compiled Allegro Common Lisp:     110 000 000 it/s
> C (-O2 and up):                   110 000 000 it/s

</F>