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Python-to-C++ Compiler
Mark Dufour writes "Shed Skin is an experimental Python-to-C++ compiler. It accepts pure, but implicitly statically typed, Python programs, and generates optimized C++ code. This means that, in combination with a C++ compiler, it allows for translation of pure Python programs into highly efficient machine language. For a set of 16 non-trivial test programs, measurements show a typical speedup of 2-40 over Psyco, about 12 on average, and 2-220 over CPython, about 45 on average. Shed Skin also outputs annotated source code."
bzerodi's point, made with Zen-like simplicity, is that language choice should be made to minimize programmer time, not machine time. I am at least a factor of ten more productive with Python than with C or C++. I am also far more confident in the correctness of what I write per line of Python than with what I write per line of C/C++.
Yes, I have have wasted some time staring at the shell waiting and waiting for it to return from some complicated Python routine. I know that compiled C would faster, and hand-rolled assembler would be faster still. But I say to myself: hey, I wrote this code in a single afternoon, how many weeks of hair-pulling would it take to re-engineer this - and make it bug-free - in C? When I put it that way, I don't mind waiting the extra minutes for Python to do my dirty work.
As a previous poster mentioned, the ability to handle tuples of mixed-types is critical. I look forward to seeing great things from Shed Skin in the future.
Dictionaries are for loosers.