On-topic: alternate Python implementations

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 08:59:18 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:

> C isn't so great for high-assurance stuff either, compared to (say) Ada.
> People do use it in critical apps, but that's just because it is (or
> anyway used to be) so ubiquitous.

And then they are shocked, SHOCKED I say!, when their app has enough 
buffer overflow security vulnerabilities to sink a battleship.

[half a wink]


> Haskell doesn't sound all that great as a translation target for Python
> either, unfortunately, because its execution semantics are so different.

I have no opinion on that either way, except to say that if some 
developer wants to experiment with Python-in-Haskell, good on him or her. 
Trying something new is how progress is made.


[...]
> Finally, Python itself isn't all that well suited for compilation, given
> its high dynamicity.  It will be interesting to see if the language
> evolves due to PyPy.

Python is a dynamic language, but most Python code is relatively static. 
Runtime optimizations that target the common case, but fall back to 
unoptimized code in the rare cases that the optimization doesn't apply, 
offer the opportunity of big speedups for most code at the cost of 
trivial slowdowns when you do something unusual.


-- 
Steven