ShedSkin (http://shed-skin.blogspot.com) has taught me something:
simple syntax and high speed can often go together, in a computer
language.
This means two things:
1) A "fast language" can have a simple (python-like) syntax. For
example a language fast as C++ can allow:
d = {"hello":1}
as a syntax to define a dictionary (with implicit typing like in
Haskell, etc.)
Sometimes the user of a fast language needs something different than
the built-in dicts. So he/she can import a different data structure
(like ordered dicts) from the standard lib. This gives an easy syntax
for the most common case (most times normal dicts are fine) but it
allows faster and more fitting data structures (with a little less
simple syntax) for the harder situations. (If the code doesn't use the
built-in dicts then their compiled code can maybe be stripped from the
final executable.)
2) A "slow but elastic" language (Python and the like) can "compile"
some things, to go faster than now (Psyco shows this already), because
often scripts don't use/need too much dynamic tricks.
Bye,
bearophile
