The initial post posited: "The Python 3 merge of int and long has effectively penalized small-number arithmetic by removing an optimization. As we've seen from PEP 393 strings (jmf aside), there can be huge benefits from having a single type with multiple representations internally. Is there value in making the int type have a machine-word optimization in the same way?"
Thanks to the fervent response jmf has gotten, the point above has been mostly abandoned May I request that next time such an obvious diversion (aka. jmf) occurs, responses happen in a different thread?
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