Python's biggest compromises

[Robin Becker]

In article <mailman.1059707762.24307.python-list at python.org>, Ian
Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> writes
>And Java's JIT is based on (at least originally) work done on Self,
>which had to do type inference.  And actually in many circumstances Java
>requires type inference, because you can substitute in an instance of a
>subclass. 
>
>Anyway, JIT is all about runtime analysis -- if you could infer types
>completely before running the program, you would just put in the
>optimizations statically (i.e., compiling optimizations).  JIT does
>those optimizations at runtime by definition.
>

but Java does at least require specifying every type and that must at
least cut down on the amount of work required.

>And Bicycle Repair Man is inspired by the Refactoring Browser, an IDE
>tool based on another dynamic language (Smalltalk), not on a tool from a
>static language (like Java).
>
>  Ian

I don't have any data here, but I believe Python is just a little too
weakly typed for compiling to float*float type assembler efficiently.
-- 
Robin Becker