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> Why do people in the Python community get so excited over announcements? When you like a tech, knowing people are brewing improved perfs on it is kinky. On P
by BiteCode_dev 5y ago
> Why do people in the Python community get so excited over announcements?
When you like a tech, knowing people are brewing improved perfs on it is kinky. On Python, the motto has always been "it's fast enough", "if you want perfs, don't use python", "C extensions will solve this", "we don't want to make the main implementation complicated", "python dynamism and GIL make it a hard problem", etc.
So in the python world, it's particularly big news, especially given that previous attempts (gilectomy, unladen swallow, first pyston...) all died.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago> So in the python world, it's particularly big news, especially given that previous attempts (gilectomy, unladen swallow, first pyston...) all died. This is precisely the point you seem to be missing. All those things you mentioned were similar big announcements back in their day, and they all have just died by fizzling. What should be setting this one apart?
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoBecause Guido is paid to work on it.
- taland 5y agoThe only person with JIT experience listed there seems to be Mark Shannon. GvR may push through whatever is developed though. If that is cause for excitement can be seen when a product is finished.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoWhen Guido was the BDFL (but whom am I fooling, everyone still will blindly accept a PEP from him and his opinion will still weigh a ton, steering council or not), he was pretty actively against any kind of bytecode-level optimization even though a lot could be done that way, citing “simplicity” and “readability”. Most Python core developers have had pretty much a Pavlovian response to shut down any and all such discussions. I think they could get away with it for a while because none of the competing implementation would readily steal Python’s darlings, namely NumPy/SciPy and Tensorflow. Now there is competition, and it can really push CPython away to being a niche “reference implementation”, thus we are seeing these twitches. The track record of CPython core team in the last decade makes me very wary when it comes to bringing in such features. Ship it or it didn’t happen. P. S. Microsoft once threw a large sum of money at Kenneth Reitz to work on Requests, anyone remembers how that story ended?
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoReitz is no core dev, guido has always delivered. His track record is flawless. However, the first release will probably suck like asyncio or type hints did. It will take time to become usable, but it's unlikely it won't happen.
- tla100 5y agoWhat track record does GvR have in terms of speeding up CPython? He did not care for 3 decades (which is a defensible position given C extensions) and has been literally called "the boat anchor" by another HN member many times. Mypy was Jukka Lehtosalo's work, asyncio was fixed and extended by many. So now he needs a project at Microsoft, he changed his mind (or had it changed under pressure) and this is the project. We'll see, I agree though that the first version will be underwhelming, the following versions will have a max speedup of 50% but will be celebrated at conferences and here.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoSorry, I don't debate with throwaway accounts, they are usually trolls.
- entpt 5y agoNo one cares who you debate with. People are just correcting your misinformation.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoReitz is no core dev, true, but he serves as an illustration and a cautionary tale of what can happen if you throw large sums of money at seemingly-prolific people hyperactive on socmedia. Namely, that it’s absolutely not guaranteed to work.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> All those things you mentioned were similar big announcements back in their day Also, most of them released working code. So I guess we shouldn’t be excited about that, either.