Top all-time · #1858
The Pyston Blog
Company blog · blog.pyston.orgprogrammingsystems
The Pyston Blog is the company blog at blog.pyston.org, writing about programming and systems. Since 2014, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 54 times, most often “Pyston 0.6.1 released, and future plans”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link the Pyston blog as the main record of Pyston, a Python JIT that began as a Dropbox project, covering its design, benchmarks, release history and project status.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-04-29
- Pyston 0.6.1 released, and future plans5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-01-31
- Pyston 0.5 released3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-05-25
- Status Update of Pyston, an Alternative Python JIT [video]3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-11-25
- Pyston 0.5.1 Released (Python JIT-Compiler from Dropbox)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-07-15
- Pyston announces Python 3.7-3.10 support and a new direction3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-09-29
- Pyston v2.2: faster and open source3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-05-05
- Baseline JIT and inline caches2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-06-30
- Caching object code2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-14
- Pyston 0.4 released2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-11-03
What Hacker News says?
I wonder if they are in touch with kmod or tried pyston: https://blog.pyston.org/ .
Comment linking /
on “Cinder: Instagram's performance-oriented fork of CPython”Submitted Pyston v2.2: faster and open source as a story · 272 points
HN discussionRight, let's ask Dropbox: https://blog.pyston.org/2017/01/31/pyston-0-6-1-released-and... (And after that blog post, there are no commits in the github repo you linked to).
Comment linking /2017/01/31/pyston-0-6-1-released-and-future-plans/
on “A lighter V8”Submitted Pyston v2: Faster Python as a story · 262 points
HN discussionhttps://blog.pyston.org/ You can look at the last release of Pyston for why companies are not funding this work. They're just moving to other languages. Consider that Dropbox, Google, and Instragram likely spend much more than 1M on optimizing/ improving Python, just to have it still be a relatively slow language. At some point it becomes way cheaper to just move to other languages that don't require that constant l…
Comment linking /
on “Python performance: it’s not just the interpreter”Submitted Pyston 0.3: Self-hosting Sufficiency as a story · 127 points
HN discussionPyston targets Python 2.7 because that's what they use on their servers. As for why Pyston over PyPy, http://blog.pyston.org/2015/11/24/pyston-talk-recording/ has a nice video that mentions why (among other things).
Comment linking /2015/11/24/pyston-talk-recording/
on “Python 3 Is Winning Library Developer Support”Submitted Pyston-lite: our Python JIT as an extension module as a story · 125 points
HN discussionProbably because it was 2.7 only, and only 10% faster on Dropbox's code. https://blog.pyston.org/2017/01/31/pyston-0-6-1-released-and...
Comment linking /2017/01/31/pyston-0-6-1-released-and-future-plans/
on “How we rolled out one of the largest Python 3 migrations”Submitted Pyston 0.6.1 released, and future plans as a story · 53 points
HN discussion> That's a silly explanation. A smart JIT would be able to take successive Python opcodes and optimise them together as one operation, so how much time it spends interpreting individual instructions has nothing to do with the "speed", in the sense of "current speed" vs "potential speed". I think you might actually be agreeing with the explanation. The point about big opcodes means that the opportunities to look at a…
Comment linking /2016/06/30/baseline-jit-and-inline-caches/
on “Why is Python slow”Submitted Baseline JIT and inline caches as a story · 53 points
HN discussionThis article is a follow up to an earlier post ( https://blog.pyston.org/2016/06/30/baseline-jit-and-inline-c... ) which provides additional context. In short, python opcodes are inefficient because they must support a significant amount of dynamicity, even as opposed to some other language peers like JS, PHP, Lua, etc. The original post explains some of the cool stuff they're doing with Pyston (specifically baselin…
Comment linking /2016/06/30/baseline-jit-and-inline-caches/
on “Why is Python slow”Submitted Pyston v2.3.3: ARM Support as a story · 37 points
HN discussionPyston originally started as an internal project at Dropbox and they had a couple of super interesting blogposts where they detailed their approach and findings[0]. After a a year or two, the project got axed, but the devs kept working on it and then released it on their own (I don't remember the details, but evidently the chosen license for the project allowed that). Last year (I think it was last year, but can't t…
Comment linking /2014/09/
on “Pyston v2.2: faster and open source”Submitted Caching object code as a story · 31 points
HN discussionI think this is incorrect. There is even an older blog post (2016) where Pyston explicitly benchmarks Numpy: https://blog.pyston.org/2016/11/11/pyston-0-6-released/
Comment linking /2016/11/11/pyston-0-6-released/
on “Pyston v2.2: faster and open source”Submitted Pyston 0.4 released as a story · 25 points
HN discussionThere are many measures of benchmark sizes. One important measure is size of codes that account for 99% of execution time. If your codebase is a million lines but your hotspot is a thousand lines, benchmark result is sensitive to optimization quirks and in some sense benchmark is small. More on this idea here: http://blog.pyston.org/2014/12/05/python-benchmark-sizes/
Comment linking /2014/12/05/python-benchmark-sizes/
on “Defending GCC considered futile”Submitted Pyston v2.2: faster and open source as a story · 20 points
HN discussionNo matter how hard you're wishing it to be true, does not make it so. PyPy will "have" to catch up? in the name of what? PyPy is but one of the many projects that are still thriving in the 2.x ecosystem, there's even a competitor to PyPy that was launched 2 years ago that is also a 2.x exclusive: Pyston. https://blog.pyston.org Yes, a very new implementation project that happens to focus on 2.7. Python 2 gets all th…
Comment linking /
on “PyPy 5.1 released”Submitted Pyston 0.5.1 Released (Python JIT-Compiler from Dropbox) as a story · 14 points
HN discussionDropbox hasn't sponsored Pyston development in quite a while https://blog.pyston.org/2017/01/31/pyston-0-6-1-released-and...
Comment linking /2017/01/31/pyston-0-6-1-released-and-future-plans/
on “Faster CPython Ideas – Issue Tracker for Faster CPython Project”Submitted Status Update of Pyston, an Alternative Python JIT [video] as a story · 12 points
HN discussionIs this going to incorporate the work done as part of https://blog.pyston.org/2020/10/28/pyston-v2-20-faster-pytho... or https://github.com/facebookincubator/cinder ?
Comment linking /2020/10/28/pyston-v2-20-faster-python/
on “Faster CPython Ideas – Issue Tracker for Faster CPython Project”Submitted Pyston announces Python 3.7-3.10 support and a new direction as a story · 10 points
HN discussionDropbox's implementation of python was pyston: https://github.com/dropbox/pyston But I think it's dead now: https://blog.pyston.org/
Comment linking /
on “Our journey to type checking 4M lines of Python”Submitted Pyston 0.2, the LLVM-based Python JIT from Dropbox as a story · 10 points
HN discussionGoogle and Dropbox have been migrating from Python to Go to deal with Python's performance problems instead of trying to make Python run faster. https://blog.pyston.org/2017/01/31/pyston-0-6-1-released-and... https://opensource.googleblog.com/2017/01/grumpy-go-running-...
Comment linking /2017/01/31/pyston-0-6-1-released-and-future-plans/
on “PyPy v7.0.0: triple release of 2.7, 3.5 and 3.6-alpha”Submitted Pyston Team Joins Anaconda as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
