Re: [pypy-dev] a faster Python not a primary goal of PyPy?

[Beatrice During]

Hi there

Just a short comment:

The fact that we have different perspectives and views on what has been 
communicated about the project goal indicates to me that there is/or was 
an unclear communication about this ;-)

Thanks for raising attention to this Martijn.

Cheers
Bea

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Martijn Faassen wrote:

Hey,

Carl Friedrich Bolz wrote:
since I am in a very nitpicking mode...

I'm nitpicking too, but even in the first announcement of PyPy, before
it even had this name, the claim that the thing was going to be faster
than CPython was made:

 As Armin Rigo of PSYCO fame takes part in the effort,
 we are confident that MinimalPython will eventually
 run faster than today's CPython.

Holger's statement is very important. At the moment most people have
the notion that PyPy is mainly about speed.

What I am saying is that it's due to the PyPy project's communications
that this notion has spread. To correct someone who picked up on this
notion is therefore a bit confusing.

But the really exciting fact about PyPy is its flexibility, therefore
it makes sense to advertise the flexibility goals a bit (even if that
means diminishing the speed goal in one single mail to pypy-dev).

Of course, achieving high speed is a worthwhile goal but this goal
can be reached _because of_ the flexibility of PyPy (not the other
way round).

I know that, and I'll stop nitpicking now. I just thought it was a bit
weird to start correcting an impression in people that seems a
legitimate interpretation of previous communication of this project.
Then again, an emphasis on flexibility is justified.

What is exciting about PyPy seems to depend on ones perspective too. To the 
PyPy hackers themselves, the coolest thing is the flexibility allowing all 
sorts of fun experimentations with syntaxes and semantics and ways Python 
code is executed.

To the wider world outside Python language hackers however the *results*
of this flexibility of PyPy is what is truly interesting. The
flexibility by itself is not interesting at all from that perspective.
Since the topic of this thread was making money out of PyPy, this is a
relevant thing to talk about.

For non Python core hackers, the biggest potential gains in PyPy that I
heard about so far would be:

* increased performance

* making Python better in an increasingly concurrent world
(threading/GIL/stackless, etc). That ties into increased performance
too, in multi processing environments.

Regards,

Martijn
_______________________________________________
pypy-dev@codespeak.net
http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-dev


Beatrice Düring                 Change Maker
Tel: 031- 7750940               Järntorget 3
Mobil: 0734- 22 89 06           413 04 Göteborg
E-post: [EMAIL PROTECTED]       www.changemaker.nu

        "Alla dessa måsten och alldaglighet.
        Allt detta som binder vår verklighet
        i bojor av skam och rep utav tvång.
        Alla dessa kedjor som binder vår sång.
        Jag skall slita dem alla i små, små stycken
        och möjligtvis av resterna göra mig smycken."
                                                        - hemlig
_______________________________________________
pypy-dev@codespeak.net
http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-dev