What If Python Replaced Elisp?

[Kragen Sitaker]

In article <vndg0tyg678.fsf at camelot-new.ccs.neu.edu>,
Justin Sheehy  <dworkin at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>kragen at dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) writes:
>
>> Well, Python is probably not as hard to optimize as Lisp and Scheme
>> dialects.
>
>This is an interesting statement.  On what do you base it?

Mostly ignorance; the following points come to mind, though:
- Python's numeric system is simpler.  In Lisp, you can add two fixnums
  and get a bignum, or not, depending on what the fixnums are.
- Python has explicit control structures; Scheme implementations
  generally express control structures through tail-recursion (with
  macros or otherwise), and require the compiler to recognize
  tail-recursion.  Although I am not yet initiated into the Mysteries
  of the Continuation-Passing Compiler, it intuitively seems that loop
  optimizations (e.g. strength-reduction, constant subexpression
  elimination) should be more straightforward if it's obvious what is
  and isn't a loop.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
-- 
<kragen at pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
The Internet stock bubble didn't burst on 1999-11-08.  Hurrah!
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