python compiler (psyco)

[Andrew McGregor]

He's right, you know, you probably don't need it.

Python is usually used as an interpreter.  Psyco is indeed a JIT compiler, 
which means it compiles 'just in time' as the code is executed.  You don't 
need it to learn to program in python, and it will most likely confuse you 
(like, sometimes debugging psyco-ised code is hard because the diagnostics 
don't correspond to the code you wrote).  It's an advanced and experimental 
thing that is mostly useful if you have python code that is much, much too 
slow *and* will benefit from psyco, which is by no means all code.

Generally, psyco makes simple programs use heaps more memory, be harder to 
debug and run slightly slower.  Sometimes it makes big, complex programs 
run much faster.  Best only to use it if you have a really big program that 
you know works stably, has a full test suite so you know if psyco breaks 
something, and is too slow.

Andrew

--On Saturday, January 18, 2003 19:53:26 +0000 CIouded 0ne 
<ciouded0ne at aol.com> wrote:

> i use windows so yea i would appreciate it if you could send me the
> binaries but what did you mean its python JIT? what is that? and i
> thought the python interpreter was shell cause thats what i was using i
> think anyway i could be wrong but at the title bar of the program it
> saids python shell. and why do you say i probably dont need it? seems
> like a compiler would be better than an interpreter?
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>