Cameron Laird wrote: > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, > Alex Martelli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ... . > >Of course, the choice of Python does mean that, when we really truly > >need a "domain specific little language", we have to implement it as a > >language in its own right, rather than piggybacking it on top of a > >general-purpose language as Lisp would no doubt afford; see > ><http://labs.google.com/papers/sawzall.html> for such a DSLL developed > >at Google. However, I think this tradeoff is worthwhile, and, in > >particular, does not impede scaling.... > > ....I'm confused, Alex: I sure > think *I* have been writing DSLs as specializations of Python, > and NOT as "a language in its own right"....
I think Alex is suggesting that if they used, for example, a version of scheme with a good optimizing compiler they could implement sawzall like convenience with almost the same performance, including startup, etc. whereas even a highly optimized python based approach would at least have a comparatively large startup penalty. For an environment like Google where they scrape thru their logs of various sorts doing lots of trivial scans you can probably save a lot of money and time on lots of machines by optimizing such scrapes (but keep your bactine handy). And as the sawzall paper pointed out, even static type checks can prevent a lot of wasted machine bandwidth by avoiding dumb errors. But the real question for someone like Rob Pike is why use scheme when you can invent another little language instead, I suspect :). -- Aaron Watters === Stop procrastinating soon. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
