Has Mark Hammond attained pariah status yet?

[A.M. Kuchling]

In article <mailman.1015967242.23615.python-list at python.org>, 
	Neil Schemenauer wrote:
> That was AMK.  It seems the Parrot guys are more interested in
> micro-optimizations and adding regex support to the VM than in
> supporting Python on Parrot.  Too bad.

To expand on that response a bit: you still can't use Parrot to
implement any vaguely "real" programming language because there's no
support for implementing variables.  Once you've filled up all 32 PMC
registers, there's no way to spill any registers to memory because
there are no opcodes to do so.  I'd really like to work on a
Python-to-Parrot translator some more, but right now there's no point
in trying to do so because there would be no way of implementing
Python's scoping.

Unfortunately development effort seems to be going to premature
optimization -- an x86 JIT, regex opcodes, counting the cycles taken
by the main loop -- instead of filling in the missing pieces, so I'm
getting increasingly skeptical that Parrot will provide a useful
substrate for anything.

--amk                                                             (www.amk.ca)
I suppose the best way to find out where you come from is to find out
where you're going, and then work backwards.
    -- The Doctor, in "City of Death"