From: Michael Neumann <mneumann@...>
Date: 2004-06-18T17:38:20+09:00
Subject: Re: the new great computer language shootout

On Fri, Jun 18, 2004 at 08:57:59AM +0900, Lennon Day-Reynolds wrote:
> The Sieve results I got weren't using Psyco; using it, the difference
> in performance is about what the shootout lists, proportionally.
> However, it requires source-level changes to the files, and the source
> code on the shootout site doesn't included those changes. It's also
> not mentioned in the language information page for Python, or listed
> as a seperate implementation.
> 
> Psyco does some great things for the performance of certain
> algorithms, but it's not part of the core Python distribution for any
> number of reasons: only works on x86, breaks several standard
> introspection and debugging libraries, and perhaps most importantly,
> prevents redefinition of methods at runtime on optimized objects.

Hmm, if we'd had namespace selectors in Ruby, such optimizations (e.g.
optimizing integer/floating point operations) would become possible, at
least theoretically, without breaking code or loosing introspection at
the overall level. I might be wrong, of course :-)

Regards,

  Michael