That was kind of overdue. The project started five years ago while massively overpromising.
They should perhaps have kept it in a separate branch back then, but now is the next best time.
CPython's selling point was that it is simple, fast enough with C extensions and the code was accessible. Complicating the code base for occasional 50% speedups (and regressions ...) just isn't worth it. There are so many other languages that fill that need.
Now, I hope that the PEP does not overpromise again and is accepted because of Instagram pressure. Instagram can keep its own JIT fork or switch to PHP, Go or whatever.
This hasn't been true for a very long time. Python's major selling points these days are the accessibility of the language and the extensive ecosystem. A vanishingly small fraction of users ever look at the implementation internals. Telling people "if you don't like it, switch to a different language" is particularly unhelpful because rewrites are rather famously expensive. Making things more complicated for the few maintainers, so that they work better for the millions of users, is easily a worthwhile tradeoff.
Who is going to pay for maintaining the massively more complicated implementation though? Microsoft pulled their funding of the Python team, and even if they hadn't I think there's a danger in making Python so complicated that it can no longer be maintained without the backing of some giant corporation.
Comments
That was kind of overdue. The project started five years ago while massively overpromising.
They should perhaps have kept it in a separate branch back then, but now is the next best time.
CPython's selling point was that it is simple, fast enough with C extensions and the code was accessible. Complicating the code base for occasional 50% speedups (and regressions ...) just isn't worth it. There are so many other languages that fill that need.
Now, I hope that the PEP does not overpromise again and is accepted because of Instagram pressure. Instagram can keep its own JIT fork or switch to PHP, Go or whatever.
This hasn't been true for a very long time. Python's major selling points these days are the accessibility of the language and the extensive ecosystem. A vanishingly small fraction of users ever look at the implementation internals. Telling people "if you don't like it, switch to a different language" is particularly unhelpful because rewrites are rather famously expensive. Making things more complicated for the few maintainers, so that they work better for the millions of users, is easily a worthwhile tradeoff.
Who is going to pay for maintaining the massively more complicated implementation though? Microsoft pulled their funding of the Python team, and even if they hadn't I think there's a danger in making Python so complicated that it can no longer be maintained without the backing of some giant corporation.