[jnxx]

That's really surprising if one considers for a moment how many things Python has in common with Common List, a language which can be compiled to run near C speed (albeit with some sacrifices on safety i.e. "unsafe" optimizations). And if anything, Python 3 has become more similar to Lisp, while running at 1 / 20 of its speed.

[beagle3]

Python does have a lot in common with CL; but the problem with Python is that almost any call you cannot statically inline, which is most of them, can change the semantics of everything else - you've just called math.floor() ; are you sure it wasn't just monkeypatched to assign 7 to all local variables who have an 'x' in their name in the caller's frame?

Most of these uses are very rare, but the tail is incredibly long for Python, and the problem is that you can't even compile a "likely normal" and a "here be dragons" versions, and switch only when needed - you need to constantly verify. The same is not true, AFAIK, with Common Lisp - being a lisp1 and having a stronger lexical scope than python does.

Shedskin is a Python to C++ compiler that mostly requires the commonly-honoured constrained that a variable is only assigned a single type throughout its lifetime. (And that you don't modify classes after creation, and that you don't need integers longer than machine precision, and ....); While many programs seem to satisfy these requirements on superficial inspection, it turns out that almost all programs violate them in some way (directly or through a library).

The probability that Shedskin will manage to compile a program that was not written with Shedskin in mind is almost zero.

Nuitka was started with the idea that, unlike shedskin, it will start by compiling the bytecode to an interpreter-equivalent execution (which it does, quite well), to get a minor speed up - and then gradually compile "provably simple enough" things to fast C++; a decade or so later, that's not working out as well as hoped, AFAIK because everything depends on something that violates simplicity.

[nemoniac]

> The same is not true, AFAIK, with Common Lisp - being a lisp1 and having a stronger lexical scope than python does.

Common Lisp is a Lisp2.

[beagle3]

Thanks for the correction, indeed, I meant lisp2 even though I typed lisp1;

It makes it easier to compile than a lisp1 (to which Python is closer), because the standard call form s-expression can be bound early.