D vs VM-based platforms

[Daniel Keep]

Jan Claeys wrote:
> Just like some people write libraries in Fortran or assembler or some
> vector processor language because C and C++ and D are "too slow".   ;-)

Or out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

Funny thing, turns out SSE is actually *slower* for doing a dot product
than regular old x87 code!

> There is one commonly used JIT-compiler for Python ('psyco') and it is
> actually useful in some cases, while I haven't seen one single
> Python-to-native-code compiler that makes code that's actually faster
> than the interpreter in most cases...
> 
> Python's strength is its "dynamism" and ability to adapt to
> "unexpected" changes at run-time.  And the fact that Python developers
> write extensions in other languages if speed is really important and
> 'psyco' doesn't help proves that compiling Python to native code before
> it's run is not really a useful option.

That's what I like about Python; it's a massively expressive language
that doesn't get in your way if you need the speed.

Incidentally, it's called "dynamicysm".

*DRINK*

	-- Daniel

-- 
int getRandomNumber()
{
    return 4; // chosen by fair dice roll.
              // guaranteed to be random.
}

http://xkcd.com/

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