Pythran announcement

[Serge Guelton]

Hi, numfocus enthusiast,

I am sharing this announcement from the Pythran project, as it can
provide enlightenment to the whole community.

After two years of effort trying to rip the best performance out of the
Python language, the Pythran developing team is finally moving from
Python to Javascript as a target language.

It has been a burden to work on a language with such simplistic syntax
that does not even make it possible to format code as we wish (like in
the old days with FORTRAN 77!).

We expect a huge boost in productivity with the use of Javascript, as
well as many new optimization opportunities. Given the success of this
language in the Web area, we foresee a similar move from the scientific
community toward this clean, general purpose language. As a primary
goal, we will first translate Javascript to Python that will be
translated to optimized, parallel, vectorized C++ thanks to the current
Pythran infrastructure. Note that this will gracefully integrate into
existing toolchains, like:

Coffeescript -> Javascript -> Python -> C++ -> Asm

In a pure UNIX tradition!

Join the move!