> The main issue is that python has dynamic typing. The type of object > that is referenced by a particular name can vary, and there's no way > (in general) to know at compile time what the type of object "foo" is. > > That makes generating object code to manipulate "foo" very difficult.
Could you help me understand this better? For example, if you have this line in the Python program: foo = 'some text' bar = {'apple':'fruit'} If the interpreter can determine at runtime that foo is a string and bar is a dict, why can't the compiler figure that out at compile time? Or is the problem that if later in the program you have this line: foo = 12 now foo is referring to an integer object, not a string, and compilers can't have two names referring to two different types of objects? Something like that? I in no way doubt you that this is not possible, I just don't understand enough about how compiling works to yet "get" why dynamic typing is a problem for compilers. Thanks. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list