How to Build a Python-to-C++ Compiler out of Spare Parts - and Why — Xavier Thompson

Typon is a Python-to-C++ compiler focusing on concurrency and parallelism, offering two main primitives: Fork and Sync

The project aims to optimize performance while maintaining Python semantics, allowing compilation of whole programs with classes, inheritance, and automatic memory management

Fork enables parallel execution opportunities with minimal overhead, optimizing sequential cases by default while allowing work stealing when worker threads are idle

The compiler integrates structured concurrency, ensuring all parallel strands are joined before function return, preventing concurrency leaks

Type inference is built-in, with the compiler able to deduce types from context while supporting generic functions and classes

Python interoperability is maintained - any valid Typon program is also a valid Python program, making it a true subset of Python

The project solved the C10K problem, enabling handling of tens of thousands of connections simultaneously

Unlike asyncio which is single-threaded, Typon enables true multicore execution without the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL)

The compiler leverages Python’s AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) module for parsing, making development simpler

The project chose C++ over Rust due to C++’s flexibility in implementing Python-like semantics and classes