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

[Alex Martelli]

--- holger krekel <hpk at trillke.net> wrote:

> Hi Alex!
> 
> On Sun, Sep 25, 2005 at 18:42 -0700, Alex Martelli wrote:
> > --- Armin Rigo <arigo at tunes.org> wrote:
> >    ...
> > > If anyone shows up with a Javascript parser, I'm sure we could
> > > together
> > > hack (and translate (and later have a JIT from)) a basic
> Javascript
> > > interpreter within a few weeks :-)
> > 
> > Actually, I think the currently useful thing might be a way to
> > compile (any decent language, Python for choice) INTO Javascript
> > (with reasonable efficiency), so one could write AJAX pages
> without
> > actually having to code in Javascript...;-)
> 
> that's a second possibility but there are two crucial
> perequesites regarding current PyPy: 
> 
> - a translation approach that focuses more on high-level 
>   languages (instead of the current RTyper "C" one) 
> 
> - a browser/DOM simulation layer in Python to allow 
>   rapid prototyping.  

Yep, the former would surely require lots of work (though maybe not
the latter).

>  
> I believe the idea with a PyPy/JS Interpreter is more 
> interesting, at least from the PyPy perspective.  Btw, 

Possibly, but I advisedly used the adjective "useful" rather than
saying "interesting";-)

JS's only advantage is one of *deployment* -- browsers have JS
interpreters, so you can write AJAX code and dramatically improve the
user experience.  "Sweating blood" is a charitable description of
what it takes, but several examples prove it can work in RL.

I just find myself daydreaming that I could do the coding in Python
(or almost any other VHLL) rather than JS, that's all;-)

> being faster than current JS interpreters is probably 
> easier than being faster than CPython :-) 

Yes, good point.

> Such a JS-interpreter implementation could be 
> integrated with browsers allowing JS and Python 
> directly in the browser. 

Any Python implementation might be integrated with browsers, but it
just seems to take a long time happening (even for Firefox, which
should allow it most easily)...;-)

> 
> That being said, it might actually be worthwhile to compile 
> RPython to Javascript which should be reasonably fast
> for small programs.  One possibility is to just create 
> flowgraphs from a python program and then transform the 
> flowgraph to javascript source code (without much 
> annotation).  

True, annotation wouldn't help much here (translating among VHLLs).


Alex