At 01:25 AM 12/9/04 +0200, Stelios Xanthakis wrote:
The only thing that will fix the PR issue is to have a Python compiler
distributed as part of the language. It doesn't matter if it doesn't
support the full generality of Python, or even if it doesn't speed many
operations up much. The only real requirements are that it can be used to produce "native" executables
I don't hink it's a matter of native executables.
As I explained later in that message, "native" simply means, "has an .exe extension on Windows".
For PR purposes, it would suffice to bundle py2exe with Python 2.5 and say that Python "now includes a compiler to produce executable files". This will then be picked up and misinterpreted by the trade press in exactly the same way that the article Guido cited picked up and misinterpreted what was said about 2.4.
If you read the article carefully, you will notice that the author translated "we rewrote a few modules in C" into "we made Python faster by switching to C". If you ask anybody what language is faster, language X or C, most everybody will answer "C", regardless of what X is (unless it's assembly, of course).
All of the discussion about *actually* improving Python's performance is moot for PR purposes. Public perception is not swayed by mere facts (as one might cynically observe of the U.S. political system). If the goal is to achieve a PR win, the important thing is to pick a meme that's capable of succeeding, and stay "on message" with it. The *only* meme that's organically capable of trumping "Python is slow because it's interpreted" is "Python is compiled now".
Me, I don't really care one way or the other. I used to sell software I wrote in TRS-80 Basic, so Python's performance is fine for me, and I'm certainly not a compiler bigot. I'm just responding to Guido's inquiry about what might work to increase Python's *perceived* speed in popular consciousness, not its actual speed.
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