Re: Is Elisp really that slow?

[Stefan Monnier]

> So from a personal POV, I would be
> interesting/fun to write some of my Elisp into
> C, and if I get good enough at it, maybe
> I could even do it for the project.

FWIW, compiling existing Elisp to C code is not really interesting in
the sense that if it exists as Elisp code it's usually because it's not
very speed-sensitive.

What is more interesting is to take existing C code and see if it can be
rewritten into a kind of Elisp (or other language that has similar
dynamic properties, most importantly the ability to replace code at
run-time) that can be compiled back to efficient code.

After all, the main problem with the part of Emacs that's written in
C is that you can't change it from your ~/.emacs, contrary to all the
Elisp code.


        Stefan