Hey, Laura Creighton wrote: > In a message of Sun, 11 Nov 2007 09:14:54 +0100, Martijn Faassen writes: >> Hi there, >> >> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/11/08/PyPy >> >> It might be worth it for someone to comment on it, as the one comment >> there is rather negative about PyPy (it'd really help to have PyPy >> interpreters in production somewhere, as before you do, the criticism in >> the comment cannot be properly countered) > > Somebody not in the project can comment on it if they like. I'm > not in the habit of responding to troll-bait. If that person > sincerely thinks that we haven't produced much in 2 years then > he either is completely unaware of what we have done, or he > cannot understand it.
> I'm fine with combatting ignorance, but not the with people in the > 'my-sports-teams-is-better-than-your-sports-team' mode. It's a negative message in a widely read blog. Even if it's offensive and wrong, it's also bad marketing for the project. By now any (minor) damage it did is done though, I guess, as it'll disappear off people's radar again. I of course don't agree that you didn't accomplish anything, but of course on the other hand I continue on my mission to poke you guys gently about seeing PyPy into production (my own work). Once PyPy is used in production there's an easy way to blow any such criticism out of the water. If it never happens, you've accomplished research goals, which are worthwhile by itself, but I'd prefer to see something more pragmatic myself in addition. :) >> I'm not sure how to interpret Tim Bray's post. Frankly, I was a bit >> disappointed by what made it in there. It's interesting to analyze as it >> gives some clue about how your pitch was received and understood. > > Tim can understand all the implications of new technology and we > really impressed him. His problem was in believing that we had done > what we had said, and now that we can do what we promised. And he > is not techie -- in the sense of being a language designer who > has read all the neat scientific papers of language design -- he > lives close to the programming-not-deeply-informed-by-computer science > world. I also live close to that world. It's an audience you want to reach, I think, so it was interesting to read what came out of your meeting from that side. I guess he'll believe you once you have a compliant JITed PyPy interpreter running on the JVM in production, then. :) >> It's too bad the potential of a compliant, maintainable Python >> implementation on the JVM doesn't seem to make it to his blog. I assume >> you also pitched actual work on *Python* on, say, the JVM, to him as a >> possible candidate for funding. As opposed to any arbitrary language, >> which basically lets Tim change the topic to a Ruby discussion. > > Tim is very Ruby focused. He's not interested in python, he said, > because 'the ruby community is more vibrant'. Vibrant is measured > in body-count. body-count? As in how many people are part of it (I imagine Python would do pretty well compared to Python) or how many people die in horrible flame wars? :) > He's funding all the reimplimentations of Ruby, > and know s the people, and likes the people. So he has a certain > amount of loyalty to them, too. That makes sense. > He really wants to make Rails faster. He says Django is "as good as > rails" or something to that effect, but that doesn't change the fact > that what he wants to do is make rails faster. Heh, as someone from the minor Grok camp I have my own opinions about what is as good as what. :) [snip] > Think of this as very positive. It's glad to hear from your side, thanks! I didn't mean to criticize you at all, I was just curious to explain the blog entry which presented PyPy in a somewhat unusual light. > We go spend a whole day at Sun on Monday, focused on the JVM. > John Rose, who is organising this, and who knows Samuele from > a currently running Java expert committee, has invited some > people, including some JRuby people to attend. John Rose is > already _really excited about this_. > > What's the worst that can happen? We get to support our Python habit > by building an interpreter for Ruby. The worst thing that can happen is that you build no interpreters in any language that can be used in production. :) If you start building a Ruby interpreter, the worst thing that can happen is that the Python interpreter never gets completed. > Somebody was going to come along > and do it sooner or later, i.e. as soon as PyPy is making everything > go at speed, not just integer math. i.e. as soon as we stop spending > 50% of our time in the garbage collector! I'm not saying you shouldn't build a Ruby interpreter. I'd debate against building one without funding, unless this doesn't distract a lot. I'd also debate against shifting the major focus on building Ruby in PyPy before Python's done. I'm not seriously thinking you are proposing this, but you started talking about worst-case scenarios. :) Anyway, I think you're also saying this, as a Python interpreter is your main technology demonstrator and test-bed. > There is nothing but good news here. Be happy for us. All right, I'm happy for you. :) Regards, Martijn _______________________________________________ [email protected] http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-dev
