3 ms·

25-50% has been hoped for many times in the past 3 decades. I don't find that very impressive. CPython got big because of its relatively decent C-API and glue

by qteax 5y ago

25-50% has been hoped for many times in the past 3 decades. I don't find that very impressive. CPython got big because of its relatively decent C-API and glue capabilities. 25% does not make a difference, decent C extensions have speedups in the order of 10-100 times (yes, times, not percent). If I had a dollar for every time someone proposed a Python speedup ...

pjmlp 5y ago
Python is feeling the pressure of not having a JIT on the box. Microsoft is reactivating their JIT project for Python as well. Their talk tomorrow: "Talk: Restarting Pyjion, a general purpose JIT for Python – is it worth it?" https://us.pycon.org/2021/schedule/presentation/52/ https://us.pycon.org/2021/schedule/presentation/52/
- aztec100 5y ago
  There have been many similar talks in the past decades. At some point Unladen Swallow was presented as "Google's project" (which is quite exaggerated). It looks more like Microsoft has JIT envy now that Instagram and others have open sourced (quite restricted) JIT projects and has to show presence again. I think every CPython JIT project will be full of corner cases in both performance and behavior, so it will add to the growing database of weird Python behavior that users have to memorize.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Indeed, it all boils down to the way Python community doesn't embrace such projects. Usually Python's high dynamism comes into the picture as main reason, however Smalltalk and SELF are just as dynamic, you can change the whole image at any given point in execution. In Smalltalk it suffices to send a become: message to change the complete meaning of an object, and references to it, across the whole image.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
This time, Guido is paid to work on it, and he is competing with cinder, pyjion and pyston.
- morelisp 5y ago
  Mark Shannon's involvement is more interesting. There is no evidence Guido will be especially good at optimizing CPython performance (and arguably lots of evidence to the opposite). And as he's no longer BDFL it's not clear what power he really has to get his changes in if the Steering Council still shares his previous aesthetic preferences and not his current ones.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    Guido track record speaks for itself: he gives an announcement, he studies the problems, he implements, he releases something that kinda works but is meh, he improves on it for years, and then you have a new python feature. He always delivers. That's a trademark. So yes, it's a big deal. It means something will come out of it no matter what, in opposition to everything that happened before.
    - tla100 5y ago
      Others implement and improve, he gets all the credit. This is why no famous JIT designer would touch CPython.
      - morelisp 5y ago
        I don't see any evidence of this being GvR taking undeserved credit rather than it just being another of the weird cults that 4chan has built up around major programming figures from the late 1990s.
    - morelisp 5y ago
      I have absolute trust in GvR's decisions in many areas, particularly about language design and teaching programming. But I don't see that he has any special insights into VM performance, let alone the low-level intricacies JIT design. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread he really has egg on his face after denying Python's performance problems for so many years. I would have more respect if he had taken a firm stance that keeping CPython's interpreter simple had pedagogical value, but instead he (and other core devs) repeatedly argued that Python did not have a performance problem, and that's why it was OK to keep it simple. It took until major pref regressions early in the Python 3 lifecycle to break out of this mindset.
MR4D 5y ago
I think you are right to be skeptical, but this is GvR with Microsoft's money. So hopefully the combination of those two can make it work.
klyrs 5y ago
> If I had a dollar for every time someone proposed a Python speedup ... Well, that's just the thing. Many have tried, many have succeeded, but their work hasn't been upstreamed so adoption is almost nonexistent. This is different. It's finally a mainline project. That's noteworthy, and long overdue given the plurality of proofs-of-concept.
Too 5y ago
If you claimed JavaScript was fast 10 years ago people would also laugh in your face. Todays JS is 10 times or more faster, thanks to JIT.

by qteax 5y ago

pjmlp 5y ago

Python is feeling the pressure of not having a JIT on the box. Microsoft is reactivating their JIT project for Python as well. Their talk tomorrow: "Talk: Restarting Pyjion, a general purpose JIT for Python – is it worth it?" https://us.pycon.org/2021/schedule/presentation/52/ https://us.pycon.org/2021/schedule/presentation/52/

aztec100 5y ago
There have been many similar talks in the past decades. At some point Unladen Swallow was presented as "Google's project" (which is quite exaggerated). It looks more like Microsoft has JIT envy now that Instagram and others have open sourced (quite restricted) JIT projects and has to show presence again. I think every CPython JIT project will be full of corner cases in both performance and behavior, so it will add to the growing database of weird Python behavior that users have to memorize.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Indeed, it all boils down to the way Python community doesn't embrace such projects. Usually Python's high dynamism comes into the picture as main reason, however Smalltalk and SELF are just as dynamic, you can change the whole image at any given point in execution. In Smalltalk it suffices to send a become: message to change the complete meaning of an object, and references to it, across the whole image.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

This time, Guido is paid to work on it, and he is competing with cinder, pyjion and pyston.

morelisp 5y ago
Mark Shannon's involvement is more interesting. There is no evidence Guido will be especially good at optimizing CPython performance (and arguably lots of evidence to the opposite). And as he's no longer BDFL it's not clear what power he really has to get his changes in if the Steering Council still shares his previous aesthetic preferences and not his current ones.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Guido track record speaks for itself: he gives an announcement, he studies the problems, he implements, he releases something that kinda works but is meh, he improves on it for years, and then you have a new python feature. He always delivers. That's a trademark. So yes, it's a big deal. It means something will come out of it no matter what, in opposition to everything that happened before.
  - tla100 5y ago
    Others implement and improve, he gets all the credit. This is why no famous JIT designer would touch CPython.
    - morelisp 5y ago
      I don't see any evidence of this being GvR taking undeserved credit rather than it just being another of the weird cults that 4chan has built up around major programming figures from the late 1990s.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    I have absolute trust in GvR's decisions in many areas, particularly about language design and teaching programming. But I don't see that he has any special insights into VM performance, let alone the low-level intricacies JIT design. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread he really has egg on his face after denying Python's performance problems for so many years. I would have more respect if he had taken a firm stance that keeping CPython's interpreter simple had pedagogical value, but instead he (and other core devs) repeatedly argued that Python did not have a performance problem, and that's why it was OK to keep it simple. It took until major pref regressions early in the Python 3 lifecycle to break out of this mindset.

MR4D 5y ago

I think you are right to be skeptical, but this is GvR with Microsoft's money. So hopefully the combination of those two can make it work.

klyrs 5y ago

> If I had a dollar for every time someone proposed a Python speedup ... Well, that's just the thing. Many have tried, many have succeeded, but their work hasn't been upstreamed so adoption is almost nonexistent. This is different. It's finally a mainline project. That's noteworthy, and long overdue given the plurality of proofs-of-concept.

Too 5y ago

If you claimed JavaScript was fast 10 years ago people would also laugh in your face. Todays JS is 10 times or more faster, thanks to JIT.