Episode 4 - Frame Evaluation

What makes Python an interpreter? Today we're talking about ceval.c, the wonders of frame evaluation, and how it changed over the years.

# Timestamps

(00:00:00)  INTRO

(00:00:59)  BACK TO PYTHON 2.6

(00:02:53)  Stack virtual machine

(00:04:41)  First encounter with opcodes

(00:08:06)  What even is frame evaluation?

(00:12:51)  Stack! Which stack?

(00:15:46)  PRESENT DAY

(00:16:41)  Computed gotos

(00:21:22)  PEP 523: JIT me, maybe

(00:26:53)  Let's generate the interpreter

(00:29:08)  The JIT is coming

(00:33:13)  Python function call inlining

(00:37:23)  Instrumentation: DTrace, PEP 669

(00:41:50)  lltrace and pystats

(00:44:02)  Eval breaker

(00:47:54)  Signal handling

(00:50:47)  Recursion limits

(00:54:27)  String concatenation special case

(00:58:24)  WHAT'S GOING ON IN CPYTHON?

(00:58:42)  3.12.0a2

(00:59:12)  Critical section API adoption

(00:59:34)  PyOnceFlag

(01:00:28)  PyDict_GetItemRef()

(01:03:36)  PyList_Extend() and PyDict_Pop()

(01:04:18)  Parser: better error messages for non-matching elif/else

(01:05:39)  glob.translate()

(01:07:22)  TLS-PSK in the ssl module

(01:08:35)  IDLE debugger improvements

(01:10:50)  First micro-op in the Tier 2 interpreter

(01:11:18)  OUTRO