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The Faster Python project would’ve got further if Microsoft hadn’t let the entire team go when they made large numbers of their programming languages teams redundant last year. All in the name of “AI”. Microsoft basically gave up on core computer science to go chase the hype wave.

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You’re right, of course: even Guido seems to have been moved off working on CPython and onto some tangentially-related AI technology.

However, Faster CPython was supposed be a 4-year project, delivering a 1.5x speedup each year. AFAIK they had the full 4 years at Microsoft, and only achieved what they originally planned to do in 1 year.

To be fair, they suffered a bit from scope creep, as mid project it was started a second major effort to remove the gil. So the codebase was undergoing two major surgeries at the same time. Hard to believe they could stick to the original schedule under those conditions. Also gil removal decreases performance from sequential execution. I imagine some gains from Faster CPython were/will be spent compensating this hit on gil-less single thread performance.

(This affected TypeScript, .NET and other folk too)

See also VC++ now lagging behind ISO, after being the first to achieve C++20.

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