Slower than Python

[John Colvin]

On Saturday, 2 March 2013 at 16:06:57 UTC, Peter Alexander wrote:
> On Saturday, 2 March 2013 at 15:43:57 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
>> C is a (reasonably) well known and used language thought to 
>> create fast
>> code. RPython is Python but with some restrictions that is 
>> statically
>> compiled.  For writing interpreters, RPython spanks C. PyPy is 
>> not the
>> only language using RPython to implement the interpreter. C's 
>> days in
>> this game are seriously numbered.
>
> Source? (Googling "rpython interpreter speed" didn't show 
> anything)
>
> There's always claims that systems like RPython, or Haskell, or 
> LuaJIT, or Java HotSpot are able to rival or beat C, yet all I 
> ever see are small toy programs. Show me something big. 
> Something with 100's of thousands of lines of code.
>
> If all this is true, where are the video games written in these 
> languages that rival performance/fidelity of AAA titles? I've 
> never seen that. Ever.

Rpython has been used to write a very fast jit (pypy) which is 
not the same as an interpreter. The interpreter is what you fall 
back to when you can't use the jit.

I don't know how fast pypys interpreter is specifically, but it's 
not it's main selling point.