stackless python

[François Pinard]

[Paul Rubin]

> The thing I don't fully understand is that several Scheme implementations
> are both smaller and faster than Python.

Python is bigger than Scheme, most probably because of all its bundled
libraries.  Scheme is more bare by comparison.  As for speed, Scheme is
more simple as well, simple enough for allowing compilation.

> I've been wondering for a while whether it's time to graft a Python
> parser onto a Scheme compiler/evaluator.

There is a cost in the generality given by all the __SPECIAL__ functions
in Python, and following the evaluation chain induced by class nesting.
I guess that if you reimplement Python in Scheme, with all its features,
you will not gain speed over the implementation we currently use.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard