On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 10:11 AM, <bart4...@gmail.com> wrote: >> In that same thread, one of the lead Python devs Victor Stinner talks about >> some of his work on embedded devices where he has a hard limit of 128MB for >> *everything*: boot loader, kernel, OS, applications, etc. > > (128MB or 128KB? In the 1980s we were all running in 64KB to 640KB of memory. > 128MB might be what a well-endowed mainframe might have had!)
Yes, and we didn't have Python then. When I had a computer with 640KB of memory, my options were (1) BASIC or (2) 8086 assembly language, using DEBUG.EXE and its mini-assembler. Later on (much much later), I added C to the available languages, but it was tedious and annoying, because one tiny change meant minutes of compilation. Also, I had to fit everything inside 20MB of hard disk space, which was shared with my brother. I'm not sure whether 128MB is work memory or total storage, but I would suspect the latter. The idea of a sourceless Python distribution isn't to cut down on RAM usage but storage, if I understand correctly. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
