Super-Fast Python Implementation for .NET and Mono
Lansdowne writes "Jim Hugunin, the creator of Jython, has released an incredibly fast implementation of Python for Microsoft .NET and Mono called IronPython. Here's his PyCON 2004 presentation, including some benchmarks. He concludes: 'Python is an extremely dynamic language and this offers compelling evidence that other dynamic languages should be able to run well on this platform.'"
I usually take "released" to mean there is an implementation that is publicly available. Unless I am somehow just missing it, it doesn't seem to have been released yet...
A 50% speed boost isn't *that* much; The Python JIT runtime that was on SlashDot just a few weeks ago cited significantly higher increases in performance. Fast, yes, but I'm not amazed or anything here :)
I would not bet that most free software machines do not have a JVM installed. VMs are a great chance for OpenSource to really shine. I used java for an internal program at my company. It is a mission critical app and has worked well for two years now. The best part is that it also runs on Linux. When all of the mission crtical apps are available on Linux then we can move a large section of our office to Linux workstations.
What most people do not understand is that for the vast majority of business apps the choke point is IO and not CPU speed.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.