Python JIT project was asked to pause development

(discuss.python.org)

39 points | by kbumsik 2 hours ago ago

12 comments

  • Qem an hour ago

    > For that reason, the Steering Council is formally requesting a Standards Track PEP be authored that the community can discuss and the Steering Council can formally accept (or reject), making the case for the JIT as a supported, non-experimental part of CPython: its guarantees, its maintenance commitments, and its impact on redistributors.

    I didn't notice the current PEP was a provisional one. Hope the new one gets approved. The experimental JIT was reported to finally breaking even and surpassing the default interpreter just a couple of months ago[1].

    [1] https://fidget-spinner.github.io/posts/jit-on-track.html

    • IshKebab a minute ago

      Sure but best case 15% faster clearly isn't worth the complexity of a JIT. It really needs to be at least twice as fast. Pypy pretty much achieves that on average.

    • ksec 42 minutes ago

      >The experimental JIT was reported to finally breaking even and surpassing the default interpreter just a couple of months ago[1].

      Thank You. As someone who don't follow python closely I thought their JIT would be similar to what Ruby has.

      Not that Ruby YJIT or ZJIT is anywhere close to what JVM provides, but in this case it seems to be quite far ahead of Python.

      Which is surprising given how many major companies are using Python. May be because those using Python are not using it as critical part of work unlike Shopify and Stripe which is their core language?

    • mike_hock 39 minutes ago

      Kind of a shit move to suddenly pull the rug once they've finally gotten it working. Should have been kept out of main from the start.

  • kelvinjps10 11 minutes ago

    What a shame it will receive a halt when they where starting to make progress I know that after submitting the pep it will go back to development. But t would have been better to just keep the development and the pep for an actual release or continue and if gets rejected ask them to stop

  • 12398761 11 minutes ago

    That was kind of overdue. The project started five years ago while massively overpromising.

    They should perhaps have kept it in a separate branch back then, but now is the next best time.

    CPython's selling point was that it is simple, fast enough with C extensions and the code was accessible. Complicating the code base for occasional 50% speedups (and regressions ...) just isn't worth it. There are so many other languages that fill that need.

    Now, I hope that the PEP does not overpromise again and is accepted because of Instagram pressure. Instagram can keep its own JIT fork or switch to PHP, Go or whatever.

  • IshKebab 5 minutes ago

    Seems reasonable. As I understand it the JIT implementation has not really been successful anyway.

  • OutOfHere 38 minutes ago

    Losing development momentum for a beancounting reason like this one is a sure way to kill a project. It works every time. Once development is halted, it is very difficult to pick it back up.

  • jhayward 16 minutes ago

    > While the intent is not to call for competing proposals, we believe that now is a good time to discuss and propose alternative proposals as well.

    If I were a contributor I would read such language as saying "we have no respect for you or your intelligence, so we'll just straight up gaslight you and expect you to accept it."

    The dictum can't be read literally - it has to be read like the manipulative, narcissist-speak that it is. And what it's telling you is - get out.

    • _old_dude_ 7 minutes ago

      I agree. And the next section is very clear that they want to kill the project.

        > For example, rather than proposing one single concrete JIT implementation,
        > it may make more sense for the PEP to describe a JIT infrastructure that
        > can support multiple implementation strategies.
        > Since many different and promising JIT tracing approaches continue to be proposed,
        > we believe the infrastructure should make it easy to experiment with and evaluate
        > those approaches within CPython rather than be highly coupled with a single strategy.
      
      Allowing multiple strategies is far harder and as far as I know, JIT tracing is still unproven.
  • nmstoker an hour ago
    • elpocko 35 minutes ago

      Don't bother clicking, that post got 0 attention. Not helpful, mate.