5 ms·

The current perfomance of Unladen Swallow is only marginally better while the memory consumption is a lot worse. And I think a lot more work will be required to

by amix 17y ago

The current perfomance of Unladen Swallow is only marginally better while the memory consumption is a lot worse. And I think a lot more work will be required to improve perfomance and memory usage of Unladen Swallow... PyPy is another interesting project that seems to be under active development ( nightly benchmarks against CPython http://buildbot.pypy.org/plotsummary.html http://buildbot.pypy.org/plotsummary.html ). I don't know how this decision on supporting Unladen Swallow will affect PyPy, but it would be a shame if it died as it has a lot of interesting ideas - - and I think it has a lot more potential than Unladen Swallow.

callahad 17y ago
From the accepted PEP: "We view reducing memory usage as a blocking issue for final merger into the py3k branch. We seek guidance from the community on an acceptable level of increased memory usage."
ominous_prime 17y ago
I think that the current consensus is that unladen-swallow was aimed at a short term performance boost, while pypy has more ambitious long-term goals. While the CPython branch may be the current "standard", there's no reason that another runtime couldn't surpass it and become defacto.
- codexon 17y ago
  I don't think PyPy has a chance at becoming the standard the way things are going now. Their funding has ended, and I don't think they will manage to pony up another million+ in funding after 5 years. PyPy isn't compatible with C modules, and can be up to 5x as slow as Cpython (according to their own benchmarks). Making unladen-swallow the python standard will probably cause a brain-drain and make others hesitant to support PyPy.
rbanffy 17y ago
Performance is heavily dependent on use cases. PyPy is not compatible with libraries written in C while this is a core design decision for Unladen Swallow. To use a car analogy, PyPy is a race car that is not street legal, while Unladen Swallow is an European sports coupé that is slightly faster than the mild-mannered CPython sedan we all know and love while using somewhat more fuel. As far as car analogies go, this one looks pretty good.
- bch 17y ago
  How can you tell it's not an African sports coupé?
  - AdamN 17y ago
    I don't know ... what's the difference?
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      The African sports coupé is not migratory.
- dalke 17y ago
  PyPy implements ctypes and can work with C libraries.
bad_user 17y ago
PyPy has a lot of potential, but it won't be usable in the near future, and it will certainly not die since it's primary goal is to implement Python in Python (or come as close as possible). And consider they haven't reached the speed of CPython (which by all means, it's slow) although the project started in 2004. Surely if they'll get there, it will be awesome, but in the meantime there's no reason to not take a more pragmatic approach. On the other hand, Unladen Swallow is using LLVM, which may create the necessary tools for LLVM to be a suitable VM for dynamic languages (versus the JVM / CLR). I consider this to be exciting news actually ... Python 3 doesn't offer me much, and I won't switch to a less supported Python version unless I have a bigger incentive (right now I'm happy with Python 2.6). Maybe Unladen Swallow won't be able to achieve it's goals (5x faster), but if it's 3x faster with only a reasonable increase in memory consumption, than it's worth it.

by amix 17y ago

callahad 17y ago

From the accepted PEP: "We view reducing memory usage as a blocking issue for final merger into the py3k branch. We seek guidance from the community on an acceptable level of increased memory usage."

ominous_prime 17y ago

I think that the current consensus is that unladen-swallow was aimed at a short term performance boost, while pypy has more ambitious long-term goals. While the CPython branch may be the current "standard", there's no reason that another runtime couldn't surpass it and become defacto.

codexon 17y ago
I don't think PyPy has a chance at becoming the standard the way things are going now. Their funding has ended, and I don't think they will manage to pony up another million+ in funding after 5 years. PyPy isn't compatible with C modules, and can be up to 5x as slow as Cpython (according to their own benchmarks). Making unladen-swallow the python standard will probably cause a brain-drain and make others hesitant to support PyPy.

rbanffy 17y ago

Performance is heavily dependent on use cases. PyPy is not compatible with libraries written in C while this is a core design decision for Unladen Swallow. To use a car analogy, PyPy is a race car that is not street legal, while Unladen Swallow is an European sports coupé that is slightly faster than the mild-mannered CPython sedan we all know and love while using somewhat more fuel. As far as car analogies go, this one looks pretty good.

bch 17y ago
How can you tell it's not an African sports coupé?
- AdamN 17y ago
  I don't know ... what's the difference?
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    The African sports coupé is not migratory.
dalke 17y ago
PyPy implements ctypes and can work with C libraries.

bad_user 17y ago

PyPy has a lot of potential, but it won't be usable in the near future, and it will certainly not die since it's primary goal is to implement Python in Python (or come as close as possible). And consider they haven't reached the speed of CPython (which by all means, it's slow) although the project started in 2004. Surely if they'll get there, it will be awesome, but in the meantime there's no reason to not take a more pragmatic approach. On the other hand, Unladen Swallow is using LLVM, which may create the necessary tools for LLVM to be a suitable VM for dynamic languages (versus the JVM / CLR). I consider this to be exciting news actually ... Python 3 doesn't offer me much, and I won't switch to a less supported Python version unless I have a bigger incentive (right now I'm happy with Python 2.6). Maybe Unladen Swallow won't be able to achieve it's goals (5x faster), but if it's 3x faster with only a reasonable increase in memory consumption, than it's worth it.