[Python-Dev] Optimization targets (original) (raw)

Jeremy Hylton jeremy at alum.mit.edu
Thu Apr 15 10:38:26 EDT 2004

On Thu, 2004-04-15 at 10:27, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> > http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/hacks/speeding-python.html

I recently met Mario Wolczko who worked on the Self language, and asked him if he had one sentence of advice for Python. His response was: Just-in-time compilation.

It seems like an obvious, but labor intensive solution to me. I didn't get a chance to pursue discussion much with Jim Hugunin or Mike Salib, but it would be interesting to know why they focus on static analysis; Self started out with static analysis but got better performance with runtime type feedback (http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/labs/oocsb/papers/toplas96.shtml).

Another question that I'd love to hear the answer to: What's the difference between Pysco and something like this Self implementation or the HotSpot Java implementation? I've never read a clear explanation of what Pysco does or how it compares to other systems that do dynamic compilation.

Jeremy

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