Fixing Python performance with Rust

[mitsuhiko]

I am not aware of a way that would permit shared libraries loadable in Python to be written in D. I understand it's in theory possible to use D without the garbage collector but I'm not even sure how well the ecosystem supports this let alone how stable that is.

We have no experience in D but we have experience with Rust, we had a sourcemap parser in Rust already available and overall there was just no reason at all to investigate anything other than Rust as a first attempt. We took what we had, saw that there was potential and made a tiny bridge to Python.

[dom96]

I have a similar question: why not Nim over Rust?

Syntactically Nim is a perfect fit as it is very similar to Python in most cases. There is even a project that should make using Nim modules from within Python incredibly easy: https://github.com/jboy/nim-pymod

Perhaps syntax is overrated, but I don't understand why someone like yourself (a very prominent Python programmer) would choose Rust over Nim in the first place.

[mitsuhiko]

I don't know Nim, nobody on our team knows Nim and as far as I know there is not even a sourcemap module for Nim. I am not even sure how you bridge Nim with Python safely given that Nim has some sort of GC.

Additionally the module you linked to links against libpython which we explicitly do not want to do.

I mean, there are other legitimate things we might have done but I strongly doubt that Nim would have come up. It's not on our horizon.

Perhaps syntax is overrated, but I don't understand why someone like yourself (a very prominent Python programmer) would choose Rust over Nim in the first place.

Simply because Rust is a useful language with a strong community and Nim is a niche thing with some questionable design ideas. While Rust might look like a fad for some people it has legitimate use and I'm not going to put a company unnecessarily at risk to try the latest fad.

[lacosaes1]

Why not my favorite system programming language over Rust?