> The take that CPython should be a reference implementation and thus slow always aggravated me
What is the actual reason for that? How do other languages avoid falling into that trap?
That thread gave me the impression the source of the problem is direct linkage to C extensions instead of native high level foreign interfaces. The resulting code is too tightly coupled to CPython internals which prevents optimization. Is this right?
Don't know, can only speculate. From what I observed, I would conclude that no one has had the right idea so far of how to do this. With Self it took a few years, with Smalltalk - as has now been shown - forty years, and with the surprise that AST interpreters with Graal are faster than bytecode interpreters. Someone will probably have a brilliant idea for Python in a few years' time.
People certainly say that a lot. This thread for example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38923741
> The take that CPython should be a reference implementation and thus slow always aggravated me
What is the actual reason for that? How do other languages avoid falling into that trap?
That thread gave me the impression the source of the problem is direct linkage to C extensions instead of native high level foreign interfaces. The resulting code is too tightly coupled to CPython internals which prevents optimization. Is this right?