Stefan Behnel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just read the release announcement of PyPy's 1.1 beta:
> 
> http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2009/04/beta-for-110-released.html
> 
> According to their benchmarks, they are now less than 2x slower than
> CPython in most cases and in some cases even 20% faster. Cython is
> currently about 30% faster than CPython for plain Python code, but that
> only concerns the "Python code that Cython supports", which is not at all
> comparable to what PyPy supports.
> 
> My feeling is that the goal to make CPython support "most of Python" is
> getting more important simply because PyPy exists. There is not that much
> that is missing, but the sad thing is that the main part that *is* missing
> is a very important part of the language: closures. 

I'm very happy that work on closures will be resumed and this is simply 
a digression:

I don't think we have to think of ourselves as in direct competition 
with PyPy (and/or Unladen Swallow). Personally I'm more than happy to 
use pure Python rather than Cython for the kind of things that can be 
sped up by those projects anyway (makes for a shorter compile/run cycle).

What I think sets Cython apart is that we add a superset to the Python 
language for adding types; which are simply needed in some situations. I 
think that is where we "compete".

When PyPy runs as fast as CPython, perhaps PyPy can start supporting the 
Cython type annotations (at least the pure Python mode ones); Jython 
could support the same annotations in time, and so on.

I.e., I see Cython as the language and philosophy at least as important 
as the speed we can run pure Python code at vs. PyPy :-)

-- 
Dag Sverre
_______________________________________________
Cython-dev mailing list
[email protected]
http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/cython-dev

Reply via email to