From: behrends at cse.msu.edu (Reimer Behrends)
Date: 29 Apr 1999 23:27:10 GMT
Subject: Python IS slow ! [was] Re: Python too slow for real world
References: <613145F79272D211914B0020AFF6401914DAD8@gandalf.digicool.com> <p5g15lmb35.fsf@bidra241.bbn.hp.com>  <37272CA0.3F3F02A2@prescod.net>
Message-ID: <slrn7ihn46.35q.behrends@allegro.cse.msu.edu>
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Paul Prescod (paul at prescod.net) wrote:
> Markus Kohler wrote:
> > You are right that one should choose the right tool for a problem, but
> > I disagree that Python is optimized for the general case. Squeak a free
> > Smalltalk implementation (www.squeak.org), is already much faster ( about
> > 3 times actually )  than python and it has even a true Garbage
> > Collector. 
> 
> This is a little off-topic but I'm curious whether squeak has an embedding
> API. Is there any languge that is as easy to embed as Python, and also has
> full garbage collection?

Ruby. (Was discussed here before.) See

	http://www.netlab.co.jp/ruby/

I think it is actually easier to extend with C code (because you don't
have to keep track of reference counts, among other things). On the
other hand, I could live without some of the more Perl-inspired
constructs in Ruby (nothing against Perl in general, it just happens
that its feature set is just the opposite of what I personally like in
a programming language -- i.e. thousands of different idioms and
extensive use of punctuation symbols).

				Reimer Behrends




