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I think it's really cool that Python has a healthy third-party interpreter community. PyPy, IronPython, Jython, and now RustPython expand Python's accessibility

I think it's really cool that Python has a healthy third-party interpreter community. PyPy, IronPython, Jython, and now RustPython expand Python's accessibility. It's very cool to see how many people are working on this, and I wonder what kind of problems with CPython this has exposed also.

brnt 3y ago
I wonder if anyone actually uses those third-party interpreters for anything serious. I've never come across anyone that did.
- copx 3y ago
  The infamous MMO game EVE uses Stackless Python.. and the players certainly seem to take it very seriously.
  - dagurp 3y ago
    why infamous?
    - jaymzcampbell 3y ago
      I think it might be in reference to the semi-frequent heists that happen, that have real monetary value behind them. EVE players seem to be a special breed. Some of the stories are pretty incredible. - https://www.pcgamer.com/inside-the-biggest-heist-in-eve-online-history/ https://www.pcgamer.com/inside-the-biggest-heist-in-eve-onli... - https://www.mmorpg.com/news/an-eve-online-player-has-pulled-off-a-major-heist-in-one-of-mmos-most-powerful-alliances-2000129491 https://www.mmorpg.com/news/an-eve-online-player-has-pulled-... - https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the-infamous-eve-online-bank-heist-the-stuff-of-legends/ https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the-infamous-eve-online-ban...
- gkbrk 3y ago
  At least PyPy sees real production use.
- v3ss0n 3y ago
  PyPy is one of the most underrated python implementation. It just makes your pure python code 20x faster without needing to change anything ( if you don't have c++. Extension depends) We had used PyPy in production , especially on Real-time/ asynchronous web apis that doesn't need machine learning stack
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    Absolutely It is really underrated. Maybe it's the extension issue, maybe it's something else or maybe it's the fact that it was born as an experimental platform more than anything But it should have been more popular
    - galangalalgol 3y ago
      Python's use base is now dominated by ML and scientific in general isn't it? Both of those communities are relying on extensions completely. I am quite possibly biased as I haven't written any python that didn't use at least numpy.
      - brnt 3y ago
        I guess I could have stated my bias up front as well: mostly a scientific user/dev here. I did enable pypy wheel builds for a pybind11 project and have things magically work, and I've had 'pypy-days' to see if there was any breaking for me (none so far, so kudos!), but other than that never actually used it/found uses for it.
      - ilovetux 3y ago
        I still use Python for scripting simple things and for writing web services. I use fastapi for simple things, but I will use Django for anything that needs a database because it has the best migration tooling that I have used.
      - dboreham 3y ago
        > Python's use base is now dominated by ML and scientific in general isn't it? No? Python may dominate those fields vs other languages, but those fields don't dominate Python use, in my experience.
- networked 3y ago
  The release manager for PyPy posted "Ask HN: Is anyone using PyPy for real work?" last year and got many responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940871.
- _kbh_ 3y ago
  Ghidra uses Jython not sure if that counts as serious.
- pletnes 3y ago
  Pypy is nice if you want more performance. From my experience it seems underused. Never seen jython and ironpython used - yet.
  - eventualhorizon 3y ago
    I worked on a project (15+ years ago) that used Jython to put a web front end on GDS systems (airline reservation mainframes). It was in production and being used in some of the largest travel call centers at the time. The whole thing was built in Jython.
  - doix 3y ago
    Around 4-5 years ago, I saw a lot of IronPython used by data analysts using Spotfire[0]. I've seen Jython used to write an IDE on top of Eclipse. I'm guessing almost nobody uses it for their SaaS, but outside of that, these runtimes do see some use. [0] https://www.spotfire.com/ https://www.spotfire.com/
  - lmm 3y ago
    Pypy gives you at best a single-digit speedup, and requires carefully going through your dependencies and checking all your codepaths. That's rarely a good value proposition for a business - if you're growing fast enough that performance is an issue, you're going to need a bigger speedup than that pretty soon, and if you're taking the time to go through all your codepaths, it doesn't cost a lot more to make a bigger change like switching languages entirely.
- timomaxgalvin 3y ago
  No.. because the only reason to use python is the ecosystem of packages and that's painful enough on the official implementation.
  - pseufaux 3y ago
    Curious what trouble you've had? The Python package ecosystem has always "just worked" for me. That's true regardless of the interpreter implementation I use. I generally test my projects against both CPython and Pypy.
  - haswell 3y ago
    Python has been my go-to for prototyping since 2003. Maybe I’ve just adjusted to its quirks, but I keep returning to it despite picking up another dozen languages since. I’ve encountered other people who hate it, but never understood why; what issues are you experiencing?
    - virgildotcodes 3y ago
      I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been able to git clone any python project (that isn’t hello world equivalent), follow the readme and have it just run first shot. I’m always having to dive in and figure out which packages are missing, wrong version, etc. As I do this I find myself wondering if the repo maintainers make a habit of actually trying to set up their project from scratch just by following their readmes. I’m assuming they just get out of date and then leave it to the community to troubleshoot their own installs. For whatever reason I don’t seem to have nearly the same difficulties trying to clone and run rust or node projects for example. More generally, the fact that there are about 20 different ways to manage your venvs, and that you seemingly tend to accrete every version of python released in the last 20 years with no clear way of managing all those installations, makes it quite confusing for newbies.
      - doix 3y ago
        Do you have any examples? I've been out of the Python game for _ages_, but can't you pretty much always just: git clone ... python -m venv venv source ./venv/bin/activate pip install -r requirements.txt Then work on that repo? Everything after "venv" is too new for me, and I've ignored it and somehow not had any issues. If there are some packages that rely on C code and don't have wheels or whatever, you need to deal with the C ecosystem which is the real hell in my opinion. All the autotools/cmake/scons, library paths, header paths, PKG_CONFIG, etc. I've had so many issues building C projects that I can't even begin to remember all the issues.
- benrutter 3y ago
  I think RustPython gets used in ruff (the linter), or at least I saw they were experimenting with that idea. Which is mainly what its built for - running python code in rust, since its still a fair bit slower than cpython. Otherwise, for normal job running, cloud infrastructure makes this pretty tricky unless you're a big company. I work for a small company and we run python code on things like azure functions, until they support other python interpreters, we'd need a massive expected benefit to justify that sort of self-building of architecture.
- dmurray 3y ago
  We used Jython very extensively at a former employer, a high frequency trading firm. Originally it was to be used as a configuration language, to allow traders to easily write scripts that configured trading strategies written in Java. The scripts grew into a monstrous ecosystem of applications and analytics. Jython stuck on Python 2 and doesn't have great interop with the rest of the world Python ecosystem, so I wouldn't recommend it for a new project, but it was a big force multiplier in that use case.
  - froh 3y ago
    there are JEP, JPype and PyJNIus these days...
    - networked 3y ago
      Those are bridges to native CPython. There is also GraalPy (https://github.com/oracle/graalpython https://github.com/oracle/graalpython), which is a standalone implementation more similar to Jython. It seems already quite compatible with Python 3. I have tested the latest version graalpy-community-23.1.2 as a regular Python interpreter from the command line (i.e., not through a Java program). It was able to run my standard library-only Python scripts, as well as a script that made async HTTP requests with the external library HTTPX. It couldn't run a TUI program that used the Python Prompt Toolkit (`AttributeError: module 'signal' has no attribute 'siginterrupt'`). I am curious about your experience if you have used GraalPy more than I have.
      - froh 3y ago
        wow oracle is really nervous about python and Microsoft's support for it, huh? I just now learned about this project, thanks for pointing it out. I'll be curious how they go about shared data, especially shared str/String. also I personally happen to depend on Windows support, I'll go popcorn on the future of this project...
- haswell 3y ago
  It’s been quite a few years since I worked on this, but spent some time implementing and administering an enterprise infrastructure auto-discovery tool (trying to remember the name - it was a very expensive product from HP, who acquired it from Mercury I think) that was built in Java and exposed a scripting layer to admins via Jython. I haven’t seen much Jython since, but encountered a few enterprise tools doing this. It was an effective way of enabling advanced use cases and extensions of the existing Java stack without requiring the admin/developer to touch Java.
- segmondy 3y ago
  I have seen them used extensively, especially pypy & jython by big companies. I have seen ironpython twice, but I rarely venture into windows/.NET land.
- dartos 3y ago
  I think eve online famously uses a third party interpreter. Stackpython maybe?
- emidln 3y ago
  I've used pypy in anger a few times. I haven't needed to do reasonably performant webdev in python for awhile, but there was a time when PyPy and the cffi-based database drivers could not be beat by CPython interpreters for non-trivial code. This still might be the case, but I haven't profiled it at all (recently). This was back in python 2.7 days in the mid 2010s.
- hosteur 3y ago
  Oh yes! We use pypy for many batch jobs deployed in production. We switched to pypy several years back and that allowed us to push a great deal more batch jobs through per window with zero code changes.
nprateem 3y ago
I tried the latest django with pypy recently and couldn't get it working, which sucked.
WorldMaker 3y ago
I wish IronPython ever gets over the Python 3.x hump. It's been "dead" for a while. Every now and then rumors that some developer has started up on it again, but never seems to get to a release state. To be fair, F# filled most of its niche after it "died" so it's not a need in any way, just a wish for nice things because there were a few years where IronPython was a very nice thing to have.
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  IronPython3 seems to be in pretty active development. Unfortunately, there are a lot of features that still need to be added.

brnt 3y ago

I wonder if anyone actually uses those third-party interpreters for anything serious. I've never come across anyone that did.

copx 3y ago
The infamous MMO game EVE uses Stackless Python.. and the players certainly seem to take it very seriously.
- dagurp 3y ago
  why infamous?
  - jaymzcampbell 3y ago
    I think it might be in reference to the semi-frequent heists that happen, that have real monetary value behind them. EVE players seem to be a special breed. Some of the stories are pretty incredible. - https://www.pcgamer.com/inside-the-biggest-heist-in-eve-online-history/ https://www.pcgamer.com/inside-the-biggest-heist-in-eve-onli... - https://www.mmorpg.com/news/an-eve-online-player-has-pulled-off-a-major-heist-in-one-of-mmos-most-powerful-alliances-2000129491 https://www.mmorpg.com/news/an-eve-online-player-has-pulled-... - https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the-infamous-eve-online-bank-heist-the-stuff-of-legends/ https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the-infamous-eve-online-ban...
gkbrk 3y ago
At least PyPy sees real production use.
v3ss0n 3y ago
PyPy is one of the most underrated python implementation. It just makes your pure python code 20x faster without needing to change anything ( if you don't have c++. Extension depends) We had used PyPy in production , especially on Real-time/ asynchronous web apis that doesn't need machine learning stack
- raverbashing 3y ago
  Absolutely It is really underrated. Maybe it's the extension issue, maybe it's something else or maybe it's the fact that it was born as an experimental platform more than anything But it should have been more popular
  - galangalalgol 3y ago
    Python's use base is now dominated by ML and scientific in general isn't it? Both of those communities are relying on extensions completely. I am quite possibly biased as I haven't written any python that didn't use at least numpy.
    - brnt 3y ago
      I guess I could have stated my bias up front as well: mostly a scientific user/dev here. I did enable pypy wheel builds for a pybind11 project and have things magically work, and I've had 'pypy-days' to see if there was any breaking for me (none so far, so kudos!), but other than that never actually used it/found uses for it.
    - ilovetux 3y ago
      I still use Python for scripting simple things and for writing web services. I use fastapi for simple things, but I will use Django for anything that needs a database because it has the best migration tooling that I have used.
    - dboreham 3y ago
      > Python's use base is now dominated by ML and scientific in general isn't it? No? Python may dominate those fields vs other languages, but those fields don't dominate Python use, in my experience.
networked 3y ago
The release manager for PyPy posted "Ask HN: Is anyone using PyPy for real work?" last year and got many responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940871.
_kbh_ 3y ago
Ghidra uses Jython not sure if that counts as serious.
pletnes 3y ago
Pypy is nice if you want more performance. From my experience it seems underused. Never seen jython and ironpython used - yet.
- eventualhorizon 3y ago
  I worked on a project (15+ years ago) that used Jython to put a web front end on GDS systems (airline reservation mainframes). It was in production and being used in some of the largest travel call centers at the time. The whole thing was built in Jython.
- doix 3y ago
  Around 4-5 years ago, I saw a lot of IronPython used by data analysts using Spotfire[0]. I've seen Jython used to write an IDE on top of Eclipse. I'm guessing almost nobody uses it for their SaaS, but outside of that, these runtimes do see some use. [0] https://www.spotfire.com/ https://www.spotfire.com/
- lmm 3y ago
  Pypy gives you at best a single-digit speedup, and requires carefully going through your dependencies and checking all your codepaths. That's rarely a good value proposition for a business - if you're growing fast enough that performance is an issue, you're going to need a bigger speedup than that pretty soon, and if you're taking the time to go through all your codepaths, it doesn't cost a lot more to make a bigger change like switching languages entirely.
timomaxgalvin 3y ago
No.. because the only reason to use python is the ecosystem of packages and that's painful enough on the official implementation.
- pseufaux 3y ago
  Curious what trouble you've had? The Python package ecosystem has always "just worked" for me. That's true regardless of the interpreter implementation I use. I generally test my projects against both CPython and Pypy.
- haswell 3y ago
  Python has been my go-to for prototyping since 2003. Maybe I’ve just adjusted to its quirks, but I keep returning to it despite picking up another dozen languages since. I’ve encountered other people who hate it, but never understood why; what issues are you experiencing?
  - virgildotcodes 3y ago
    I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been able to git clone any python project (that isn’t hello world equivalent), follow the readme and have it just run first shot. I’m always having to dive in and figure out which packages are missing, wrong version, etc. As I do this I find myself wondering if the repo maintainers make a habit of actually trying to set up their project from scratch just by following their readmes. I’m assuming they just get out of date and then leave it to the community to troubleshoot their own installs. For whatever reason I don’t seem to have nearly the same difficulties trying to clone and run rust or node projects for example. More generally, the fact that there are about 20 different ways to manage your venvs, and that you seemingly tend to accrete every version of python released in the last 20 years with no clear way of managing all those installations, makes it quite confusing for newbies.
    - doix 3y ago
      Do you have any examples? I've been out of the Python game for _ages_, but can't you pretty much always just: git clone ... python -m venv venv source ./venv/bin/activate pip install -r requirements.txt Then work on that repo? Everything after "venv" is too new for me, and I've ignored it and somehow not had any issues. If there are some packages that rely on C code and don't have wheels or whatever, you need to deal with the C ecosystem which is the real hell in my opinion. All the autotools/cmake/scons, library paths, header paths, PKG_CONFIG, etc. I've had so many issues building C projects that I can't even begin to remember all the issues.
benrutter 3y ago
I think RustPython gets used in ruff (the linter), or at least I saw they were experimenting with that idea. Which is mainly what its built for - running python code in rust, since its still a fair bit slower than cpython. Otherwise, for normal job running, cloud infrastructure makes this pretty tricky unless you're a big company. I work for a small company and we run python code on things like azure functions, until they support other python interpreters, we'd need a massive expected benefit to justify that sort of self-building of architecture.
dmurray 3y ago
We used Jython very extensively at a former employer, a high frequency trading firm. Originally it was to be used as a configuration language, to allow traders to easily write scripts that configured trading strategies written in Java. The scripts grew into a monstrous ecosystem of applications and analytics. Jython stuck on Python 2 and doesn't have great interop with the rest of the world Python ecosystem, so I wouldn't recommend it for a new project, but it was a big force multiplier in that use case.
- froh 3y ago
  there are JEP, JPype and PyJNIus these days...
  - networked 3y ago
    Those are bridges to native CPython. There is also GraalPy (https://github.com/oracle/graalpython https://github.com/oracle/graalpython), which is a standalone implementation more similar to Jython. It seems already quite compatible with Python 3. I have tested the latest version graalpy-community-23.1.2 as a regular Python interpreter from the command line (i.e., not through a Java program). It was able to run my standard library-only Python scripts, as well as a script that made async HTTP requests with the external library HTTPX. It couldn't run a TUI program that used the Python Prompt Toolkit (`AttributeError: module 'signal' has no attribute 'siginterrupt'`). I am curious about your experience if you have used GraalPy more than I have.
    - froh 3y ago
      wow oracle is really nervous about python and Microsoft's support for it, huh? I just now learned about this project, thanks for pointing it out. I'll be curious how they go about shared data, especially shared str/String. also I personally happen to depend on Windows support, I'll go popcorn on the future of this project...
haswell 3y ago
It’s been quite a few years since I worked on this, but spent some time implementing and administering an enterprise infrastructure auto-discovery tool (trying to remember the name - it was a very expensive product from HP, who acquired it from Mercury I think) that was built in Java and exposed a scripting layer to admins via Jython. I haven’t seen much Jython since, but encountered a few enterprise tools doing this. It was an effective way of enabling advanced use cases and extensions of the existing Java stack without requiring the admin/developer to touch Java.
segmondy 3y ago
I have seen them used extensively, especially pypy & jython by big companies. I have seen ironpython twice, but I rarely venture into windows/.NET land.
dartos 3y ago
I think eve online famously uses a third party interpreter. Stackpython maybe?
emidln 3y ago
I've used pypy in anger a few times. I haven't needed to do reasonably performant webdev in python for awhile, but there was a time when PyPy and the cffi-based database drivers could not be beat by CPython interpreters for non-trivial code. This still might be the case, but I haven't profiled it at all (recently). This was back in python 2.7 days in the mid 2010s.
hosteur 3y ago
Oh yes! We use pypy for many batch jobs deployed in production. We switched to pypy several years back and that allowed us to push a great deal more batch jobs through per window with zero code changes.

nprateem 3y ago

I tried the latest django with pypy recently and couldn't get it working, which sucked.

WorldMaker 3y ago

I wish IronPython ever gets over the Python 3.x hump. It's been "dead" for a while. Every now and then rumors that some developer has started up on it again, but never seems to get to a release state. To be fair, F# filled most of its niche after it "died" so it's not a need in any way, just a wish for nice things because there were a few years where IronPython was a very nice thing to have.

ZoomerCretin 3y ago
IronPython3 seems to be in pretty active development. Unfortunately, there are a lot of features that still need to be added.