unladen swallow: python and llvm

[Paul Boddie]

On 8 Jun, 12:13, bearophileH... at lycos.com wrote:
>
> The C code produced by ShedSkin is a bit hairy but it's 50 times more
> readable than the C jungle produced by Pyrex, where I have lost lot of
> time looking for the missing reference counts, etc.

The C++ code produced by Shed Skin can actually provide an explicit,
yet accurate summary of the implicit type semantics present in a
program, in the sense that appropriate parameterisations of template
classes may be chosen for the C++ program in order to model the data
structures used in the original program. The analysis required to
achieve this is actually rather difficult, and it's understandable
that in languages like OCaml that are widely associated with type
inference, one is encouraged (if not required) to describe one's types
in advance.

People who claim (or imply) that Shed Skin has removed all the
dynamicity from Python need to look at how much work the tool still
needs to do even with all the restrictions imposed on input programs.

Paul