Python compilers?

[Paul Rubin]

imbosol at aerojockey.com (Carl Banks) writes:
> > >>> a.bar = lambda x: x*x*x
> > >>> a.bar(3)
> >  27
> 
> Well, come on, of course there's going to be some things here and
> there you can do in one and not the other.  In wat is Python dynamic
> that Lisp isn't to such an extent that it would cripple any attempts
> to compile it?

The example above kills any attempt to turn a.bar() into a static
procedure call.  There's more like it, e.g. the existence of the
locals() dictionary and the ability to modify it.  However, it should
be possible to define a reasonable subset of Python that can compile
into good code.  The stuff that makes compilation difficult makes the
code unmaintainable too.  

I do think that Python's designers should wait til PyPy with
native-code backends has been deployed for a while before defining too
much of Python 3.0, so we can first gain some experience with compiled
Python.  Python should evolve towards being compiled most of the time.