[pypy-dev] a faster Python not a primary goal of PyPy?

[Beatrice During]

Hi there

Just a short comment:

The fact that we have different perspectives and views on what has been 
communicated about the project goal indicates to me that there is/or was 
an unclear communication about this ;-)

Thanks for raising attention to this Martijn.

Cheers
Bea

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Martijn Faassen wrote:

> Hey,
>
> Carl Friedrich Bolz wrote:
>> since I am in a very nitpicking mode...
>
> I'm nitpicking too, but even in the first announcement of PyPy, before
> it even had this name, the claim that the thing was going to be faster
> than CPython was made:
>
>  As Armin Rigo of PSYCO fame takes part in the effort,
>  we are confident that MinimalPython will eventually
>  run faster than today's CPython.
>
>> Holger's statement is very important. At the moment most people have
>> the notion that PyPy is mainly about speed.
>
> What I am saying is that it's due to the PyPy project's communications
> that this notion has spread. To correct someone who picked up on this
> notion is therefore a bit confusing.
>
>> But the really exciting fact about PyPy is its flexibility, therefore
>> it makes sense to advertise the flexibility goals a bit (even if that
>> means diminishing the speed goal in one single mail to pypy-dev).
>
>> Of course, achieving high speed is a worthwhile goal but this goal
>> can be reached _because of_ the flexibility of PyPy (not the other
>> way round).
>
> I know that, and I'll stop nitpicking now. I just thought it was a bit
> weird to start correcting an impression in people that seems a
> legitimate interpretation of previous communication of this project.
> Then again, an emphasis on flexibility is justified.
>
> What is exciting about PyPy seems to depend on ones perspective too. To the 
> PyPy hackers themselves, the coolest thing is the flexibility allowing all 
> sorts of fun experimentations with syntaxes and semantics and ways Python 
> code is executed.
>
> To the wider world outside Python language hackers however the *results*
> of this flexibility of PyPy is what is truly interesting. The
> flexibility by itself is not interesting at all from that perspective.
> Since the topic of this thread was making money out of PyPy, this is a
> relevant thing to talk about.
>
> For non Python core hackers, the biggest potential gains in PyPy that I
> heard about so far would be:
>
> * increased performance
>
> * making Python better in an increasingly concurrent world
> (threading/GIL/stackless, etc). That ties into increased performance
> too, in multi processing environments.
>
> Regards,
>
> Martijn
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>

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