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Can Python be written in Python?

Stuart D. Gathman stuart at bmsi.com
Thu Dec 12 20:45:32 EST 2002 
On Thu, 12 Dec 2002 15:26:15 -0500, Chermside, Michael wrote:

>> Can python be written in python? (a la scheme or lisp)
>         [...]
>> The psyco web page [...] said that theoretically, and
>> counter-intuitivally, that this could lead to a speed up in the
>> interpreter by several multiples. Is this true? If so its beautiful and
>> fascinating!)

IBM has done exactly this for Java.  While it is a different language, it
proves the concept - and is open source to boot.

http://www.research.ibm.com/jalapeno/

The main disadvantage of this approach is that the code generation has to
be done for each architecture.  When piggy-packing on C, only the C
compiler has to be ported to a new platform.  Java JIT and Psyco and
Jalapeno have to be retargeted independently from C.

The holy grail would be an intermediate language (like gcc's RTL) that
could be used by all these systems.  RTL is designed for ahead of time
compilers - but I can imagine a system used by JIT systems like Psyco and
Java as well as compilers like gcc.  Then only one thing needs to be
retargeted for a new platform.

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.
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