Python Compiling

[Jacek Generowicz]

loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin v. Löwis) writes:

> The question is: why do you want to have a compiler? Using it is much
> more difficult than an interpreter, and more time-consuming during
> development of an application. People often expect significant speed
> increases from compilation, but it turns out that those don't
> materialize. 

How would you reconcile the above statements in context of Common Lisp
compilers ?  For example, working with the CMU Common Lisp compiler
(which, funnily enough, is called Python, and compiles to native
code), should provide a practical demonstration that your statements
are, how shall I put it ... not entirely true.

Specifically:

1) Compiling your code with CMUCL is no more difficult than leaving
   the code uncompiled.

2) It is not more time consuming (on any significant scale - by which
   I mean that a human rarely notices the time-taken-to-compile during
   a normal coding-testing-debugging session).

3) Significant speed increases (wrt the uncompiled code) are usually
   observed.