Looking to advance Python performance, data science platform provider Anaconda has hired the lead developers of the Pyston alternative Python runtime.
The developers, Kevin Modzelewski and Marius Wachtler, will focus on building an open source community of users, contributors, and maintainers, with the goal of ensuring Pyston’s long-term sustainability. Support from Anaconda will enable the developers to spread usage of Pyston, Modzelewski said in a statement. Another goal is improving Python performance across a variety of applications.
Support from Anaconda will further accelerate Pyston’s development and adoption among software engineers, Anaconda said on August 30. As the project goes forward, areas of interest for Pyston development include enhanced compatibility with existing binary Python packages and expanding Pyston to additional hardware platforms.
Anaconda may incorporate Pyston into current and future projects, although that work would be separate from the Pyston project itself. Pyston is downloadable from Github. Compatible with Python source code, Pyston executes programs at an average of 20% to 50% faster than standard Python, Anaconda said. Pyston was developed between 2014 and 2017 at Dropbox before being relaunched in 2020 with Pyston v2. Billed as a fork of the standard CPython interpreter, Pyston will remain an open source project using the Python Software Foundation license.