Python frontend?

[Robert Dewar]

> I think so.  People have used jython with gcj.  I don't know that a
> special Python front end would result in much better performance or
> convenience.

Sure it would. The standard python interpretors are very slow. In class
(my honors compiler class) we did a fast SPITBOL style compiler for
Python generating x86 assembly language, and many programs ran 10-100
times faster. That was gnerating x86 asm, and with a run-time whose
critical sections were hand written in x86 asm. You wouldn't do quite
as well with a normal target indepednet interface yto gcc, but you
could definitely get a huge improvement by generating code.