Python gets faster

Python, the open-source object-oriented programming language, has moved up the release of its final 2.5 version to this August, as a result of its successful "Need for Speed" programming sprint.

The "Need for Speed" was the focus of a recent Python programming language conference that took place May 21-28 in Reykjavik, Iceland, according to Steve Holden, the conference organizer.

As part of the conference, hand-selected members of the Python developer community worked together in an intense coding sprint.

"The goal is simply to make the Python language faster," said Jack Diedrich, a "Need for Speed" participant and employee of Psynchronous, a company using Python as its analytics platform. Many of the sprint's successes, included various improvements in the Python's execution speeds.

The Python conference was sponsored by EWT LLC, a proprietary securities trading company based in California; and CCP Games, the Icelandic gaming producer best known for EVE, the online multi-player video game. Both sponsor members of the Python Software Foundation rely on Python and will directly benefit from improvements that were made to the language during the sprint.

Python 2.5 is already available in alpha. A 2.5 beta release is scheduled for June 14.