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Comment by ginko | Hacker News Reader

nit: 'Python-based' would imply to me that it's written in Python, but it looks like it's mostly C++ & LLVM:

https://github.com/exaloop/codon/tree/develop/codon

A fair implication, but they mean "Python-based" in that the language the compiler implements is based on Python.

They should have said python compiler (shorter) or python compiler in c++ (more accurate and only one character longer, including spaces).

Considering at least 2 people have gone to look at the source and then come here to comment, it would have been a net benefit for all involved. Plus, what does it say about the potential quality of your compiler if you can't even make correct English statements? This seems easier to get right than if( x = *p++ )

> This seems easier to get right than if( x = *p++ )

For people with native or fluent English, for sure. For the others, probably not.

What level of English fluency should we expect of professors at MIT and writers for their site?

_The Shaft_, a Georgia Tech periodical (similar to _The Onion_ in spirit), interviewed a local associate professor: "How can I be expected to teach math if my students don't speak basic Mandarin?"

These headlines usually work by the dept asking a researcher for a 10 sentence summary of their work. Someone in the dept summarizes that to 3 sentences, and sends that to the university pr dept. The university turns that 3 sentences into 1 and that's what's published. My take is this says more about the weird game of telephone being played than it does about the research product itself.

Yes, but it's a game of telephone that does make it annoying for HN readers to try and actually understand what's being presented, so it should be discussed and corrected if possible.

true, but if that's the case, then the game of telephone would not call (haha) into question the quality of the compiler, since the devs were not responsible for the game.

1. It currently only compiles a subset of Python, which is presumably why they said it was based on Python rather than Python.

2. There are lots of good developers who aren't capable of making any statements in English.

Hardly a nitpick. It's key to the claim.

It's a little sad because PyPy literally is written in (a restricted subset of) Python, hence the name.

And it is severely underrated. Even though performance gain is aevrate around 4x-20x. Used in production and memory usage is also about 1/6th of CPython. Can get 10x perfromance easily in many cases.

> Used in production and memory usage is also about 1/6th of CPython

I thought it would have higher memory usage? (based only on reading)

I suspect their relative memory efficiency depends on the size of the program and the size of the data it's processing.

Somewhat paradoxically, PyPy always uses more memory for programs with small working sets, but can use less memory for programs with large working sets. 1/6 is a lot more extreme than I would have expected, though.

No, it has drastically less memory requirements. It's very similar to my perl compiler, and even in non-optimizing mode it uses much less memory. In optimizing mode it's almost the same as this one. Just ~20 years older.

I experimented with SQLite, trying to insert many rows in under a minute. I ran my script with PyPy, with zero changes and it was 4x times faster!

code here: https://github.com/avinassh/fast-sqlite3-inserts

my blog post: https://avi.im/blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/

What does “literally” buy you here?

It's a nit-pick because it's ultimately just a gripe about ambiguous phrasing, not because the implications of what the phrasing means are unimportant.

Github reports it's 55% C++ and 43% Python, not too bad if it's correct.

I would expect a large chunk of the 43% Python to be tests.

Yeah, that'd make sense. Good point.

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