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Pyston v2: Faster Python

blog.pyston.org

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Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#81

Post by petters »

saurik wrote: post #38
throwaway894345 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I see little hope for Python, which is to say that while I'm sure it will continue to have a large following for many years a la C, C++, etc, I don't have hope for it being an exciting language or one that is particularly productive. Python already has performance and packaging problems which don't seem to be easily divorced from CPython, since virtually the whole reference implementation is depended upon…

100% agree. To a very real extent, Go probably only exists at all because Google poured an infinite amount of effort into Unladen Swallow--a project designed to remove the GIL from Python 2 to make it more usable for concurrent programs and add an LLVM-based JIT compiler to improve performance--and Python's response was to not only not merge it, but to break the entire Python ecosystem for a decade by forking the lan…

> Google poured an infinite amount of effort into Unladen Swallow

Google most certainly did not.

Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#82

Post by ak217 »

orf wrote: post #70
ak217 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link?

https://github.com/markshannon/faster-cpython/blob/master/pl... And some discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24848318

Thanks - Mark Shannon is a core committer, right? So hopefully he has standing to get this done.

The plan looks very high level at this point, but it looks like Mark is an expert in interpreter VM and JIT technologies. All I can hope for is that he doesn't get blocked by the "keep cpython simple" obstructionism.

Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#83

Post by Rochus »

The_rationalist wrote: post #40

Interesting to see that it significantly outperform pypy on some metrics, but wouldn't have it been better to allocate the human resources towards pypy instead of a duplicated effort?

Do you mean the Pylint result? Was this confirmed elsewhere? It's unlikely that an interpreter is faster than a tracing JIT in geomean over a relevant set of benchmarks.

Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#84

Post by coldtea »

Jasper_ wrote: post #31
rrdharan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is a welcoming community, but they are decidedly not welcoming of contributions that significantly increase the complexity of the CPython reference implementation. This has been discussed extensively: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11125769

It's a shame how the core maintainers see CPython as a "reference implementation", rather than an opportunity to make a world-class programming language implementation. That the CPython maintainers have, time and time again, decided for a "simple implementation" has pushed away many professional VM engineers and researchers who would be more than willing to help maintain a JIT. I also will say that a lot of the compl…

>It's a shame how the core maintainers see CPython as a "reference implementation"

Ironically this also makes CPython less interesting as a reference language - which keeps PyPy and co insignificant in adoption...

Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#85

Post by coldtea »

pwinnski wrote: post #3

I feel like anybody really searching for speed is using something other than Python. I don't use Python for speed, but for ease-of-use. It took me some clicks to see it's supposed to be a drop-in replacement, so that's good.

>I feel like anybody really searching for speed is using something other than Python.

Well, anybody using Python for all its over benefits, still would very much like more speed.

Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#86

Post by mrtranscendence »

newen wrote: post #64
mrtranscendence wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, there are many other languages which are not only performant, but which are rapidly encroaching on Python's historically unique(ish) "easiness" What are those languages? I may have a blindspot, but the languages that get enough buzz for me to notice are either not competing with Python in important dimensions (e.g. Rust) or have a narrower focus (e.g. Julia). Elixir maybe? JavaScript and its derivatives?…

I think Julia is strictly better than Python, both for data oriented applications and for web development.

Julia might be. It's certainly higher performance from what I understand, and it offers some syntactic flexibility that I miss from R when using Python (Python could never have a fully complete dplyr). It seems from afar to be rather more complex than those languages, though.

Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#87

Post by coldtea »

newen wrote: post #72
hhas01 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20% faster is nothing. You want at least a magnitude faster to justify the cost and risk of switching. The Python language is already 30 years old, and it wasn’t even the cutting-edge in imperative language design ( Smalltalk, Lisp ) back then. It’s positively antiquated now. I’ve never understood this tunnel-vision obsession with endlessly chasing ever-diminishing returns. It’s Zawinski's Law of Software by way of G…

I agree. Almost all arguments in favor of Python is about sunk cost. Not much about the actual language is appealing compared to modern languages.

>Almost all arguments in favor of Python is about sunk cost. Not much about the actual language is appealing compared to modern languages.

Well, I, for one, use Python because "the actual language is appealing compared to modern languages".

Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#88

Post by mrtranscendence »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #58
mrtranscendence wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, there are many other languages which are not only performant, but which are rapidly encroaching on Python's historically unique(ish) "easiness" What are those languages? I may have a blindspot, but the languages that get enough buzz for me to notice are either not competing with Python in important dimensions (e.g. Rust) or have a narrower focus (e.g. Julia). Elixir maybe? JavaScript and its derivatives?…

> I'd love to find a viable competitor to Python that's strictly better than it. I strongly recommend Go as a better Python. Personally, I think it's easier to write than Python (although people who care very little about correctness will be bothered a bit by the type checker), and the tooling is many times better (single-binary deployments, great dependency management, etc are awesome). Also, the performance is abou…

I'll be honest, as someone whose non-Python programming (paltry as it is) is mostly done in statically-typed functional languages, I have a bit of a bias against Go for the whole generics thing. I'll give it a closer look at some point.

Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#89

Post by jnwatson »

saurik wrote: post #38
throwaway894345 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I see little hope for Python, which is to say that while I'm sure it will continue to have a large following for many years a la C, C++, etc, I don't have hope for it being an exciting language or one that is particularly productive. Python already has performance and packaging problems which don't seem to be easily divorced from CPython, since virtually the whole reference implementation is depended upon…

100% agree. To a very real extent, Go probably only exists at all because Google poured an infinite amount of effort into Unladen Swallow--a project designed to remove the GIL from Python 2 to make it more usable for concurrent programs and add an LLVM-based JIT compiler to improve performance--and Python's response was to not only not merge it, but to break the entire Python ecosystem for a decade by forking the lan…

There's so little truth in this it is hard to know where to start.

Re: Pyston v2: Faster Python

#90

Post by jashmatthews »

saurik wrote: post #38
throwaway894345 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I see little hope for Python, which is to say that while I'm sure it will continue to have a large following for many years a la C, C++, etc, I don't have hope for it being an exciting language or one that is particularly productive. Python already has performance and packaging problems which don't seem to be easily divorced from CPython, since virtually the whole reference implementation is depended upon…

100% agree. To a very real extent, Go probably only exists at all because Google poured an infinite amount of effort into Unladen Swallow--a project designed to remove the GIL from Python 2 to make it more usable for concurrent programs and add an LLVM-based JIT compiler to improve performance--and Python's response was to not only not merge it, but to break the entire Python ecosystem for a decade by forking the lan…

Unladen Swallow was only an internship project.

http://qinsb.blogspot.com/2011/03/unladen-swallow-retrospect...

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