>>> On 10/3/2008 at 12:31 AM, in message <Pine.GSO.4.60.0810030017350.8955 at taxa.epi.umn.edu>, Mike Miller <mbmiller at taxa.epi.umn.edu> wrote: > On Fri, 3 Oct 2008, Smith, Craig A wrote: > >> Perl is great because you always have source and, thanks to its >> just-in-time complier, runs loops as fast as non-interpreted languages. > > How does this compare with what Perl is doing: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyco I think if you look for "Perl to C compilers" you will get a number of interesting hits. It's been a topic of conversation for years. This seems to be what Perl is "doing": http://www.parrot.org/ "Parrot is a virtual machine designed to efficiently compile and execute bytecode for dynamic languages. Parrot currently hosts a variety of language implementations in various stages of completion, including Tcl, Javascript, Ruby, Lua, Scheme, PHP, Python, Perl 6, APL, and a .NET bytecode translator." If you want to know something about Perl current events from someone other than current Python and Ruby developers, you can go here: http://rakudo.org/