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Pyston-lite: our Python JIT as an extension module

blog.pyston.org

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Re: Pyston-lite: our Python JIT as an extension module

#31

Post by nerdponx »

metadat wrote: post #7
colatkinson wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it proprietary? According to their blog, Pyston was open sourced with version 2.2 [0], and the LICENSE file in the repo [1] appears to be the same as upstream CPython. Not a rhetorical question BTW. A pluggable JIT for Python could be a boon for some projects at my dayjob, but if it's proprietary that would put a bit of a damper on things. [0]: https://blog.pyston.org/2021/05/05/pyston-v2-2-faster-and-op... [1]: h…

Thanks, I didn't know Pyston had been de-proprietarized and open sourced.

My guess is that all these major tech companies are seeing Microsoft, Google, and Facebook gain a lot of recruiting clout and general industry goodwill through their other successful open-source projects.

So now there is legitimate incentive to develop and get adoption for your own "faster Python" project, which (if successful) could end up being used by millions of developers around the world. Imagine the clout and name recognition that would come with being the company that finally made Python fast after 20+ years of failed attempts. Not to mention all the free labor (bug reports and PRs) from the open-source community, all while optimizing the tool to serve their own internal technical needs above all else.

That's my only explanation for why these companies are all DIYing their own project and not contributing to existing efforts like PyPy and HPy. I think ultimately this work is all good for the Python ecosystem, but clearly I'm a bit cynical and skeptical of large tech companies' motivations in general.

Re: Pyston-lite: our Python JIT as an extension module

#32

Post by nijave »

nerdponx wrote: post #31
metadat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I didn't know Pyston had been de-proprietarized and open sourced.

My guess is that all these major tech companies are seeing Microsoft, Google, and Facebook gain a lot of recruiting clout and general industry goodwill through their other successful open-source projects. So now there is legitimate incentive to develop and get adoption for your own "faster Python" project, which (if successful) could end up being used by millions of developers around the world. Imagine the clout and…

Maintaining internal forks is time consuming and expensive. For big tech companies they might end up saving money on infrastructure but small companies can end up sinking a lot of human resources into the project (especially if you're playing whack-a-mole with upstream changes moving in different directions and breaking things)

Open sourcing things increases the likelihood it'll be upsteamed (the use case is more obvious) and increases the likelihood you'll get support (although you now have a community to support). In addition, it's easier to plead your case if upstream breaks something (here's my source vs vague statements about an internal thing at company x)

Re: Pyston-lite: our Python JIT as an extension module

#33

Post by nijave »

nomel wrote: post #3
metadat wrote: post #2

Pyston is neat, but I'm a bit unclear. Why should we invest time and effort into more proprietary shenanigans?

Because it’s been decades, and the Python team has repeatedly made it clear that interpreter source simplicity is more important than performance. They’ve admitted it many times.

Also single threaded performance over parallelism

Re: Pyston-lite: our Python JIT as an extension module

#34

Post by kzrdude »

TechSupportJosh wrote: post #28

Is there a reason for the use of system() here? https://github.com/pyston/pyston/blob/69b190003f14dfd2f6d276... Seems easier to use the C functions to do this, rather than rely on system commands.

That is definitely unportable code that is not intended for anyone but developers to use.
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