Is python not good enough?
ikuta liu
Is python not good enough?
for google, enhance python performance is the good way better then
choose build Go language?
Go language try to merge low level, hight level and browser language.
Those I'd like to see it on python..
Stefan Behnel
I think everyone's free to put resources into the creation of new
programming languages. Google has enough money to put it into all sorts of
things without the need to have them pay off.
Stefan
Krister Svanlund
take more resources to get Python to the level they need it than to
start using Go.
Python is great for alot of things but it's not perfect for anything.
Ethan Furman
Krister Svanlund wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 4:09 PM, ikuta liu <iku...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> --
>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>>
> Every language has it uses and Google obviously thought that it would
> take more resources to get Python to the level they need it than to
> start using Go.
>
> Python is great for alot of things but it's not perfect for anything.
>
s/anything/everything/
~Ethan~
Terry Reedy
> Every language has it uses and Google obviously thought that it would
> take more resources to get Python to the level they need it than to
> start using Go.
'Google' does not think.
Go builds on previous works by the main developers. I doubt that they
even considered trying to upgrade Python and in particular, its
generators, to accomplish the parallel processing goals. Their goal of
making Go very fast to compile by machines somewhat conflicts with
Python's goal of being fast to read by humans.
Terry Jan Reedy
Aahz
ikuta liu <iku...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Is python not good enough? for google, enhance python performance is
>the good way better then choose build Go language?
It is not at all clear that -- despite some comments to the contrary --
the Go developers are intending to compete with Python. Go seems much
more intended to compete with C++/Java. If they're successful, we may
eventually see GoPython. ;-)
--
Aahz (aa...@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait
until you hire an amateur." --Red Adair
johan....@gmail.com
> In article <1b42700d-139a-4653-8669-d4ee2fc48...@r5g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
> ikuta liu <ikut...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >Is python not good enough? for google, enhance python performance is
> >the good way better then choose build Go language?
>
> It is not at all clear that -- despite some comments to the contrary --
> the Go developers are intending to compete with Python. Go seems much
> more intended to compete with C++/Java. If they're successful, we may
> eventually see GoPython. ;-)
> --
>
> "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait
> until you hire an amateur." --Red Adair
GoPython i think would be neat.
tanix
>On Jan 13, 12:55=A0am, a...@pythoncraft.com (Aahz) wrote:
>> In article <1b42700d-139a-4653-8669-d4ee2fc48...@r5g2000yqb.googlegroups.=
>com>,
>> ikuta liu =A0<ikut...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> >Is python not good enough? for google, enhance python performance is
>> >the good way better then choose build Go language?
>>
>> It is not at all clear that -- despite some comments to the contrary --
>> more intended to compete with C++/Java. =A0If they're successful, we may
>> eventually see GoPython. =A0;-)
>> --
>> Aahz (a...@pythoncraft.com) =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 <*> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0http:/=>> until you hire an amateur." =A0--Red Adair
>
>GoPython i think would be neat.
Well, as soon as they restore the braces to identify the code
blocks and provide the functionality of advanced statically
type languages, such as threads, async processing, all synchronization
primitives, garbage collection, events and GUI, i'd be willing
to switch to Python. Some of it is already there. But not all.
Except, before doing it, I'd like to know what Python buys me
compared to say Java.
--
Programmer's Goldmine collections:
Tens of thousands of code examples and expert discussions on
C++, MFC, VC, ATL, STL, templates, Java, Python, Javascript, PHP,
organized by major topics of language, tools, methods, techniques.
Chris Rebert
The lack of knowledge shown here gives me even less confidence in your
"Goldmine" collections than before.
Cheers,
Chris
--
http://blog.rebertia.com
Stefan Behnel
> Well, as soon as they restore the braces to identify the code
> blocks and provide the functionality of advanced statically
> type languages, such as threads, async processing, all synchronization
> primitives, garbage collection, events and GUI, i'd be willing
> to switch to Python. Some of it is already there. But not all.
Why don't you write up a proposal for the python-ideas list?
Stefan
Jonathan Hartley
> Well, as soon as they restore the braces to identify the code
> blocks and provide the functionality of advanced statically
> type languages, such as threads, async processing, all synchronization
> primitives, garbage collection, events and GUI, i'd be willing
> to switch to Python. Some of it is already there. But not all.
>
> Except, before doing it, I'd like to know what Python buys me
> compared to say Java.
Hey tanis.
The absence of braces from Python is a thoughtful, deliberate choice.
There are good reasons for it, and many people (especially people
round these parts) think Python is better without braces. If you don't
like it then fair enough, your preferences are your own to choose.
Other than that, Python does have every single one of the things you
enumerate.
Regarding static versus dynamic typing - many people (especially
people round these parts) believe dynamic typing to be superior to
static typing in many situations. Again, personal taste seems to weigh
heavily in this topic, but there are strong reasons to prefer dynamic
typing - it allows you to write some programs that simply couldn't be
written statically, and this greater flexibility sometimes allows you
to choose algorithms and code organisation that is a better match for
your problem than a statically typed language would, making your
programs easier to write, shorter, and simpler to read.
As for a direct comparison with Java, then perhaps the most prominent
differences are that Python generally produces shorter, simpler-
looking programs, which are easier to write and read. Dynamic typing
is an advantage of Python in most situations. On the other hand,
Python often has poorer performance than Java. My personal hypothesis
is that this performance mismatch is most pronounced in small,
benchmark-like data churning inner-loops, and becomes less significant
for most real-world programs that have high complexity, since Python's
power-through-simplicity allows developers to visualise better
algorithms and refactor more easily than would otherwise be the case.
Best regards,
Jonathan
ikuta liu
> In article <1b42700d-139a-4653-8669-d4ee2fc48...@r5g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
>
>
>
> >Is python not good enough? for google, enhance python performance is
> >the good way better then choose build Go language?
>
> It is not at all clear that -- despite some comments to the contrary --
> the Go developers are intending to compete with Python. Go seems much
> more intended to compete with C++/Java. If they're successful, we may
> eventually see GoPython. ;-)
> --
>
> "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait
> until you hire an amateur." --Red Adair
I don't think GoPython would be happen... because...
http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=2382
Go is going to take the position from python and browser language
(Native Client),
Don't surprise Go got the interpreter in the future.
tanix
>On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:53:19 -0800 (PST), "johan....@gmail.com"
><johan....@gmail.com> declaimed the following in
>gmane.comp.python.general:
>> GoPython i think would be neat.
>
> As long as it doesn't get called "GoPy" (too easy to pronounce as
>"goopy")
:--}
You guys are funny, I tellya.
John Nagle
Actually, no. It's quite possible to make a Python implementation that
runs fast. It's just that CPython, a naive interpreter, is too primitive
to do it. I was really hoping that Google would put somebody good at
compilers in charge of Python and bring it up to production speed.
Look at Shed Skin, a hard-code compiler for Python with automatic
type inference. One guy did that.
The language is fine, but the CPython implementation is obsolete.
John Nagle
Nobody
> Actually, no. It's quite possible to make a Python implementation that
> runs fast. It's just that CPython, a naive interpreter, is too primitive
> to do it. I was really hoping that Google would put somebody good at
> compilers in charge of Python and bring it up to production speed.
>
> Look at Shed Skin, a hard-code compiler for Python
A hard-code compiler for the subset of Python which can easily be compiled.
Shed Skin has so many restrictions that it isn't really accurate to
describe the language which it supports as "Python".
Hardly any real-world Python code can be compiled with Shed Skin. Some of
it could be changed without too much effort, although most of that is the
kind of code which wouldn't look any different if it was implemented in
C++ or Java.
The monomorphism restriction is likely to be particularly onerous: the
type of a variable must be known at compile time; instances of subclasses
are allowed, but you can only call methods which are defined in the
compile-time class.
If you're writing code which makes extensive use of Python's dynamicity,
making it work with Shed Skin would require as much effort as re-writing
it in e.g. Java, and would largely defeat the point of using Python in the
first place.
http://shedskin.googlecode.com/files/shedskin-tutorial-0.3.html
If you want a language to have comparable performance to C++ or Java, you
have to allow some things to be fixed at compile-time. There's a reason
why C++ and Java support both virtual and non-virtual ("final") methods.
hackingKK
> On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:34:17 -0800, John Nagle wrote:
>
>
>> Actually, no. It's quite possible to make a Python implementation that
>> runs fast. It's just that CPython, a naive interpreter, is too primitive
>> to do it. I was really hoping that Google would put somebody good at
>> compilers in charge of Python and bring it up to production speed.
>>
>> Look at Shed Skin, a hard-code compiler for Python
>>
> A hard-code compiler for the subset of Python which can easily be compiled.
>
> Shed Skin has so many restrictions that it isn't really accurate to
> describe the language which it supports as "Python".
> +1
>
> Hardly any real-world Python code can be compiled with Shed Skin. Some of
> it could be changed without too much effort, although most of that is the
> kind of code which wouldn't look any different if it was implemented in
> C++ or Java.
>
Happy hacking.
Krishnakant.
John Nagle
My point is that Python is a good language held back by a bad
implementation. Python has gotten further with a declaration-free syntax
than any other language. BASIC and JavaScript started out declaration-free,
and declarations had to be retrofitted. Python has survived without them.
(Yes, there are hokey extensions like Psyco declarations and "decorators",
but both are marginal concepts.)
The key to hard-compiling Python is that you have to compile the
whole program, not individual modules. You can't tell how an individual
module will be used until you've seen its callers. If the compiler
looks at the whole program at once, type inference has a good chance of
disambiguating most type issues.
If you can see the whole program at once, most dynamism can be detected.
What's really needed is to detect the most common case, where objects don't
have unexpected dynamism and can be implemented as hard structures.
John Nagle
Steve Holden
of function argument annotation. If you wanted to write programs that
reasoned about Python programs to optimize them, annotations could come
in very useful.
regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119
PyCon is coming! Atlanta, Feb 2010 http://us.pycon.org/
Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/
UPCOMING EVENTS: http://holdenweb.eventbrite.com/
David Cournapeau
There are efficient implementations of dynamic programming languages
which do not rely on declaration (if by declaration you mean typing
declaration), even when available:
http://strongtalk.googlecode.com/svn/web%20site/history.html
See also:
http://www.avibryant.com/2008/05/those-who-misre.html
David
John Nagle
Yes, that's my point.
Psyco was a good first step. The big win with Psyco is that it
generally can recognize when a variable is an integer or floating
point number, and generate hard code for that. It doesn't do much
for the rest of the language. Psyco is really a kind of JIT compiler.
Those are useful, but in some ways limited.
To go beyond that, global analysis is needed. A big bottleneck
in Python is that too much time is spent doing dictionary lookups
for things that could be bound at compile time. So the next big
win is figuring out which classes definitely don't have any hidden
dynamism. A global check is needed to see if any external code
messes with the attributes of a class or its functions from outside
the function. Most of the time, this is the case. Once that's
been done, the class's module can be analyzed for optimization.
If the class doesn't use "setattr", etc. to add attributes to
itself, then the class can be "slotted", with a C++ like structure for
the class members and functions.
Global analysis also has to determine the class hierarchy; what inherits
from what. It may be necessary to implement "object" as an abstract class
with a huge number of virtual functions, so that "duck typing" will work.
That's a space cost, but not a time cost.
Caller/callee type inference is useful to determine the potential types
of parameters. Often, analysis of all the calls to a function will determine
the types of many of the paraeters. Then, those parameters can be hard-typed
at compile time.
You can go this far without the restrictions Shed Skin imposes, such as
the restriction that lists must be homogeneous. If you do impose that
restriction, array processing becomes much faster. Type inference for
array elements is hard when arrays are computed from other arrays, so
that's a huge simplification.
Yes, you can't use "eval" to get at existing variables. But in Python,
you don't really need to.
John Nagle
David Cournapeau
Compilation with global type inference may be a good way to speed up
python, but it is not the only way. Your claim about lookups does seem
to contradict how the various efficient implementations of dynamic
languages work. For example, the V8 engine deal with dynamic
attributes without static analysis:
http://code.google.com/apis/v8/design.html
So JIT may be limited, but I don't think it applies to the examples
you have given. Maybe static analysis ala stalin is needed for very
fast execution.
I don't claim any knowledge on those technologies, but my impression
is that other forces held back a fast python implementation, in
particular compatibility with C extensions. For example, I know no
fast implementation of dynamic languages which do not rely on garbage
collection: if this is indeed true, it may mean that retrofitting a gc
everywhere is needed, but doing so without breaking C extensions is
hard (if at all possible ?). And certainly, one of the big reason for
the python success is easy interface with C. Maybe interfacing with C
is the real reason for holding back python implementations ?
cheers,
David
Paul Rubin
> And certainly, one of the big reason for
> the python success is easy interface with C. Maybe interfacing with C
> is the real reason for holding back python implementations ?
The CPython/C API is not terrible but it's not all that easy to use.
For example, it's very easy to make reference counting errors. Other
language FFI's that I've used avoid that problem to some extent. It's
true that CPython has quite a few existing C modules that would require
rework if the API were to change incompatibly. But I think a different
(better) API wouldn't stop people from writing new modules.
Terry Reedy
> Compilation with global type inference may be a good way to speed up
> python, but it is not the only way. Your claim about lookups does seem
> to contradict how the various efficient implementations of dynamic
> languages work. For example, the V8 engine deal with dynamic
> attributes without static analysis:
>
> http://code.google.com/apis/v8/design.html
Reading that, I notice a couple of things.
1. Like Psycho, V8 trades space for time. Given that space is now
expanding more than time is shrinking, this is more sensible in general
than it was a decade ago. Given Javascript programs are usually small
and work with small objects, this is even more sensible for Javascript
than for some Python programs.
2. It compiles to object code rather than byte code. If the only target
is standard 32/64 bit Intel/AMD processors, this is quite sensible. Does
V8 have, for instance, Cray versions?
Guido wants the reference version to be runnable on everything with a C
compiler and maintainable and upgradeable by volunteers who are not
assembler experts (which I believe are getting more rare).
tjr
Stefan Behnel
> David Cournapeau writes:
>
>> And certainly, one of the big reason for
>> the python success is easy interface with C. Maybe interfacing with C
>> is the real reason for holding back python implementations ?
>
> The CPython/C API is not terrible but it's not all that easy to use.
> For example, it's very easy to make reference counting errors. Other
> language FFI's that I've used avoid that problem to some extent.
Other languages don't have Cython.
> It's true that CPython has quite a few existing C modules that would require
> rework if the API were to change incompatibly.
"quite a few" sounds a bit too weak here. Some of the existing C extensions
have become reasons to use Python in the first place. Think of NumPy, for
example, and the whole scipy environment. Think of the
performance-to-usability ratio of cElementTree and lxml. Think of the huge
body of Cython code in Sage. Imagine what the set of dbm modules (or even
the entire standard library) would be without external C libraries and C
extensions.
The C-API and the ton of modules that use it are pretty vital for Python.
AFAICT, Py3 is pretty much a virgin platform when it comes to scientific
computing, mostly because NumPy still wasn't adapted to the changes in the
C-API. They even consider rewriting parts of it in Cython a simpler way to
solve this issue than trying to port the code itself. This shows that any
change to that API may have a tremendous effect on the usability of Python
as a whole.
> But I think a different
> (better) API wouldn't stop people from writing new modules.
"Writing new modules" may not be enough.
Stefan
Blog
There's a new PEP coming up which will propose google's codebase to be
merged with Py3k, resulting in superior performance.
alex23
> Have you not heard about the "Unladen Swallow" project from google?
> There's a new PEP coming up which will propose google's codebase to be
> merged with Py3k, resulting in superior performance.
This kind of worries me for a number of reasons:
* unladen is _way_ too immature and unproven a project to replace the
current implementation,
* Google themselves have stressed they're only concerned with
improvements that benefit their use cases, such that
* other benchmarks appear to perform _worse_ under unladen, and
* has the project even posted substantive enough gains to warrant
this change? that didn't seem to be the situation when I last checked
* so far, the speed improvements have come at a cost of significantly
higher memory use (i believe it was ~10 times that of CPython at one
point)
I dunno, I kinda feel about Unladen Swallow the exact same way I do
about Go: if it wasn't a Google project, I really doubt it would be
getting the attention it is (over the other performance enhancement
projects: cython, psyco2, pypi et al)
Phlip
> Go language try to merge low level, hight level and browser language.
Go uses := for assignment.
This means, to appease the self-righteous indignation of the math
professor who would claim = should mean "equality"...
...you gotta type a shift and 2 characters for a very common operator.
Pass!
--
Phlip
Tim Chase
Pass?! no...Pascal! :-)
-tkc
David Cournapeau
> This means, to appease the self-righteous indignation of the math
> professor who would claim = should mean "equality"...
Much more likely, this is part of the stated goal of making go very
easy to analyse (to build tools and so that go is very fast to
compile), as stated in its FAQ.
cheers,
David
Anh Hai Trinh
> On Jan 12, 7:09 am, ikuta liu <ikut...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Go language try to merge low level, hight level and browser language.
>
> Go uses := for assignment.
Except that it doesn't. := is a declaration.
s := "foo"
is short for
var s string = "foo"
Cheers,
----aht
Phlip
> > Go uses := for assignment.
>
> Except that it doesn't. := is a declaration.
Ah, and that's why Go is easy for cheap parsers to rip.
Tx all!
I was formerly too mortified to proceed - now I'm back in the Go camp.
They fixed the hideous redundancy of Java without the ill-defined
scope issues of Python & Ruby, and without the tacky little 'var' of
JavaScript!
Steven D'Aprano
I doubt it has anything to do with "the math professor". Any maths
professor will tell you that, in mathematics, = is used for both
assignment and equality, since in maths they are the same thing.
And besides, equality testing is no less common than assignment. To
appease the "self-righteous indignation of the C coders", we have to type
== instead of = for a very common operator. No matter what convention you
use, you're going to upset some group of people.
Seriously, I programmed in Pascal for many years, and typing := for
assignment is not a burden.
--
Steven
Steven D'Aprano
> They fixed the hideous redundancy of Java without the ill-defined scope
> issues of Python
Which ill-defined scope issues are you referring to?
--
Steven
MRAB
one of them!
Albert van der Horst
>In article <1b42700d-139a-4653...@r5g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
>ikuta liu <iku...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>Is python not good enough? for google, enhance python performance is
>>the good way better then choose build Go language?
>
>the Go developers are intending to compete with Python. Go seems much
>more intended to compete with C++/Java. If they're successful, we may
>eventually see GoPython. ;-)
As far as I can tell, Go was not intended to compete with anything.
It was their own itch they scratched.
Then they opened it to the world, which I applaud.
If Go was to compete with anything, they would have give it a name
that was Googleable. ;-)
>--
>Aahz (aa...@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/
Groetjes Albert
--
--
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst
Simon Brunning
> If Go was to compete with anything, they would have give it a name
> that was Googleable. ;-)
If they want it Googleable, it will be. ;-)
--
Cheers,
Simon B.
David Robinow
<si...@brunningonline.net> wrote:
> 2010/1/25 Albert van der Horst <alb...@spenarnc.xs4all.nl>:
>> that was Googleable. ;-)