alt Hacker NewsPyPy deserves much more credit (and much wider use) than it gets. The underperformance of the Faster CPython project [0] shows how difficult it is to optimize a Python implementation, and highlights just how impressive PyPy really is.
[0] The article says "Python has gotten nearly 50% faster in less than four years", but the original goal was a 5x speedup in the same timeframe [https://github.com/markshannon/faster-cpython/blob/master/pl...].
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pjmlp • 07/31/2025
The main culprit is not wanting to change the C ABI of the VM.
Other equally dynamic languages have long shown the way.
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> The article says "Python has gotten nearly 50% faster in less than four years", but the original goal was a 5x speedup in the same timeframe
IIRC they originally expected the JIT to be the single focus on CPython performance improvement. But then another front was opened to tackle the GIL in parallel[1]. Perhaps the overhead of two major "surgeries" in the CPython codebase at the same time contributed to slower progress than originally predicted.
[1] https://peps.python.org/pep-0703/