Espen Vestre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I'd say Python is more dynamic in the sense that the Python runtime > > system has to actually concern itself about the dynamism all the time > > in practice, i.e. on every object method invocation. > > Ok, but when you state that language A is more dynamic than language > B, most programmers would interpret that as (or so I guess) "A offers > more dynamism to the programmer than B" - not that it burdens the run > time system implementor with more dynamism...
I'm sorry for any misunderstanding. Maybe I should have said that Python's dynamism is more pervasive: it can be activated in more different ways and that creates an extra burden on the runtime system. Remember that the context was whether Python could be compiled to efficient machine code. So I referred to "more dynamism" from the implementers' point of view--the runtime has to pay attention to more things and spend more resources dealing with the dynamism. I think the Lispies see "more dynamism" as a good thing and are therefore defending their language from suggestions that Python is even more dynamic than Lisp. I mean "dynamic" in a less good way-- there is a huge amount of state scattered all through a running Python program, that the application can modify at random and whose contents the working of really fundamental operations like method invocation. It's just a big mess and I'd get rid of it if I could. It reminds me of like old time Lisp programs that pervasively used property lists on symbols to attach random attributes to the symbol, instead of using something like defstruct to make multi-field data values. How about if I say Python and Lisp are both dynamic, but Lisp does a better job of keeping its dynamism's potentially chaotic effects contained. Does that help? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
