We are not heroes, just very patient
Inspired by some of the comments to the release that said "You are heroes", I though a bit about the longish history of PyPy and hunted around for some of the mailing list posts that started the project. Then I put all this information together into the following timeline:
There is also a larger version of the timeline. Try to click on some of the events, the links usually go to the sprint descriptions. I also tried to find pictures for the sprints but succeeded for only half of them, if anybody still has some, I would be interested. It's kind of fun to browse around in some of the old sprint descriptions to see how PyPy evolved. Some of the current ideas have been around for a long time, some are new. In the description of the releases I put estimates for the speed of the release.
Comments
Many promising projects bite the dust not due to lack of talent, interest, need or support, but perseverance.
Not only do I believe that pypy has yet to realize it's full potential, I believe that it will actually achieve it. And then some.
So again, keep up the good work!!
p.s
(my flattr account is not yet operational ;-<)
Question,
What do the funds(EU, eurostars) cover?
I see that there had been a burst of activity during the EU period.
Does this mean that funding is a bottleneck to this project? Would the end of the current eurostars funding be an obstacle?
Then you are just very patient heroes :-D
Sure, funding does make a difference. There are couple of people currently (Anto, Armin, Carl Friedrich, partially Maciej, me ...) who get some money through the Eurostars project. This does make a difference in terms of how much time can be devoted. I guess there should be a clarifying blog post on this and maybe also some opinions and views on how things can continue after the funding period (which ends second half next year).
Amazing how far you have come. Congrats!
I found myself in 3 of those old sprint pictures, and I remember all of them as very good times that overall probably taught me more than the school I was attending during that time.
This timeline sort of makes the point. You are heroes ;). Patience is harder than a few nights of crazy hacking and brilliant ideas.
Yeah, you have more heroic patience than I tended to display
cheerleading/criticizing the project.
Currently there's nothing left to criticize for me -- I think everything's being done pretty much right (communication, releases, even work on C-module support!).
But that might change once I start to use the project seriously. :)