A historical question

[Duncan Booth]

Jerald <jfj at freemail.gr> wrote in news:chmphe$21tc$1 at ulysses.noc.ntua.gr:

> Hi.
> 
> I'd like to know when python started working with bytecode.
> It seems natural that in the first python implementations
> code was really interpreted : executed directly.
> 
> As a result, in the first days, when the py-programmer
> said:
> 
>    def foo ():
>        print 'foo'
> 
> python stored the function body and executed it each time
> foo was called. In some time it was decided to compile
> this to bytecode, optimize it and call the bytecode instead.
> 
> Is it so?

According to Google, in April 1994 Guido posted complaining about some of the 
inefficiencies in the bytecode interpreter:

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=9404120719.AA03729%3Dguido%40voorn.cwi.nl

I doubt very much whether there has ever been any implemention of Python that 
didn't use a bytecode of some form. It would be a very perverse way to try to 
write a language.