Fluid Speech

Domain Driven Design (DDD)

2012-09-06T17:01:00.001+05:30

Back in 2007, I started learning about DDD. I borrowed a book by Eric Evans from my manager at workplace and read it through. I barely understood anything (my understanding after reading the Gang of Four's book was similar). However, today it makes a lot of sense. Along with Behavior Driven Design (BDD), DDD is a powerful methodology to manage complexity within large teams. DDD Quickly is a good book to start with DDD.

C++ Implementations: Not Yet "Perfect"

2012-09-05T08:26:00.003+05:30

Some of the new features in C++0x like lambda functions increase the programmability of the language. For the first time, using lambda functions it is possible to use in a simple manner STL algorithms like std::for_each that have been "lying around" since for a decade in the language (the reason I say "lying around" is that these algorithms are used only by a small minority of programmers due to complexity of programmability before the introduction of lambda functions).

However the implementation of C++0x features is still far from complete. For example, there are issues in combining lambda functions and template code with gcc 4.5 and gcc 4.6. Another issue is that in certain cases, a non-template code does not compile once it is templated, and has to be modified to make it compile.

A Note for Job Consultants

2012-09-03T23:08:00.000+05:30

I have received phone calls from consultants about job openings, and 95% of the time I have been disappointed with interaction with them. Most of the consultants:

have a highly narrow outlook towards engineering profiles,
have never heard of any researcher doing anything meaningful, and
follow their hiring manager's words too closely and unimaginatively

I explain below in detail what I mean by each of the bullet points. However, if you are one of the consultants or hiring managers who is concerned about how many job changes I have made, or how little work experience I have, let me tell you that both of these are statements are false.

--x--

have a highly narrow outlook towards engineering profiles,

Here is what the consultant believes: Software Engineer = Code Monkey. Far from endangered, this species must be told what is to be done and slaves it out to kill bugs whenever required, be it night or be it day. These are half-witted adult primates, far less clever than managers and banksters, but still better than the dim-witted working in productive sectors.

have never heard of any researcher doing anything meaningful, and

Here is what the consultant believes: Experience = Work Intelligence = Work Experience = Slaving in a Company. Corollary: Academic work = Trash = Time Spent in Void.

So much money can be made even by selling lemon-water, so these folks must be dim-witted to go for PhD at the expense of "work experience". The guy has written code for his thesis but it must be absolutely non-industrial quality code, good only on paper. The guy may be good at talking, but which engineer is ever caught talking? The guy is saying his work may be useful to create an innovative product for the company, but what good has ever come out of universities? Almost nothing, not Google, not Photoshop, not Linux, not tens of thousands of open-source projects, nothing.

follow their hiring manager's words too closely and unimaginatively.

Here is what the consultant believes: yes keyword match! Linux = Linux on the resume! Finally, SSome Code Monkey! Whether he is good or not depends on how many years he has spent on Java (if I am looking for Java professional). Oh, half his years are in C++, then he has half the experience (and therefore half the work intelligence). The best programmer would have spent 60 years slaving Java, and preferably in the same company (unless of course the company decided to fire him). We are looking for a Gooood slave.

--x--

To summarize, such consultants are almost completely brainwashed by virtue of their jobs. A robot would probably do a better job than them. These consultants are detrimental to the health of an innovative company and I would never hire such consultants for hiring tasks for my company (when there is).

I do not want to stereotype the consultancy profession the same way that the consultants have stereotyped the profiles they hire for. I have met consultants who do a very good job; but they are rare.

> Quora on "What are the good ways to hire people smarter than you?"

C++0x and Memory Allocation

2012-08-07T14:38:00.002+05:30

We wanted "object group allocators" for related objects, such as, a shared allocator for condition instance, contribution instance, action instance, etc. as these are accessed together. Using such allocators is likely to improve performance via improved locality of reference.

C++0x scoped allocator is useful to implement such object group allocators:

https://www2.research.att.com/~bs/what-is-2009.pdf

The above is a nice overview of the C++0x features.

Scoped allocator is based on earlier proposals "Towards a Better Allocator Model" and "The Scoped Allocator Model".

A List of Microloan Websites

2012-08-01T10:36:00.000+05:30

This is a partial list I constructed a couple of years back (and therefore might not have updated information):

Finca
Kiva, in many countries
LendForPeace, in Palestine
Microloans, for profit (only US residents can invest)
Microloan Foundation, in Africa
Rangde, in India
Wokai, in China
Zishida, in Africa

I have a portfolio on Rangde and Kiva.

Assorted Links for the Week (#10)

2012-07-26T11:18:00.001+05:30

Culture

Cultural documentaries at what I can describe as a cultural capital of the internet.

Education

A post by Sujai on the IIT entrace issue. Stole the words right out of my mouth.

--!--

The recent riots in the Maruti plant in India may be, and I hope not, a taste of things to come as the worldwide economic situation gets worse and the corporate world feels the pressure. A deeper analysis, for example this article, of what has happened is called for, rather than treating this as just an episode, as is almost always done in India. My feeling is that there are two India, and there is a wider gap between them now than ever before.

Politics and Finance

There is a very little awareness in the general population of how big banks and the central banks of many of the countries are intentionally or unintentionally serving their industry interests, instead of serving public interests, for which the central banks were formed.

Indeed much of this mutual interest-serving seems to have been institutionalized into the modern education---the contemporary state of education that largely favors rote-learning, employ-ability and profit-making, rather than questioning, creativity and independent thinking.

Some of the Nobel laureates have fallen prey to this brain-washing. Some people have publicly conceded their mistakes, but others, the pseudo-capitalists and the worshippers of the market-god, still refuse to do so.

On the other hand, it is usual to find the general population (middle and lower classes, the 99% at the bottom) too busy with their pre-occupations to care for the fact that somebody is stealing their cheese, and also prolonging the suffering of the poor.

However, recently there has been some activity by many individuals to raise awareness about this issue within the general populace as well as within intellectual arguments. Given the fact that much bad news is still due from the Euro-zone in the coming months, this is an opportunity to instate big-ticket reforms in banking regulations and education.

For more, view my Youtube playlist on Finance and playlist on Education.

--!--

A note in Realpolitik from Mish Shedlock:

People voted for Rajoy for the same reason people voted for Obama. Both told lies that everyone wanted to believe. ... There are exceptions like Ron Paul, but essentially that's what politics is primarily all about - feeding people lies they want to believe in - just to get elected.

Ecology

Energy: It is interesting to note that the US might become the largest oil producing country in a few years. On the other hand, Germany is fast progressing towards a complete green energy portfolio in a few decades. India is planning for a massive oil reserve (however this reserve may seem mis-timed now after the US-news). There are possibly other (at least short-term) remedies possible in India as well.

All the above might seem like a bad news for the green-economy enthusiasts. However, due to ever-increasing energy demands, it would not be long (30 years?) before the newly-discovered oil will be over.

--!--

Indian consumers have the best sustainable behavior: survey

Media

A detailed treatment of the Falak story by Paul Beckett and Krishna Pokharel. Falak is well-known in India.

Assorted Links for the Week #9

2012-06-30T13:25:00.001+05:30

Programming

An amazing talk about tools for quick programming and "Inventing on Principle" by Bret Victor.

Advertising

Cool advertisement by Ron Paul fans.

Assorted Links for the Week (#8)

2012-06-24T14:08:00.000+05:30

Technology

In earlier post(s), I had talked about online courses. Udacity is a new one.
A book on Programming Computer Vision with Python by Jan Eric Solem.
An intriguing talk by Dr Michio Kaku about the future.

Assorted Links for the Week (#7)

2012-06-10T14:40:00.000+05:30

Misc

Satirical social cartoons by Paweł Kuczyński.

In India

Via Ajay Shah's Blog. In their paper, "Private Returns to Public Office", Raymond Fisman, Florian Schulz and Vikrant Vig study the wealth accumulation of Indian parliamentarians using public disclosures mandated by the RTI act. An excerpt:

... our results suggest a sharp difference in the value of influencing legislators at different levels in the Indian hierarchy: the votes of individual legislators have relatively low value for private agents, while the influence of ministers is potentially very valuable. At least in financial terms, one may thus think about prospective politicians being motivated more by future rewards from gaining higher positions than by the initial returns of holding offi ce. This is broadly consistent with a tournament model of politics in the spirit of Lazear and Rosen (1981), where participants compete for the high returns that only a small fraction of entry-level politicians will attain.

A high-energy speech (video) by Narendra Modi on the usage of technology in governance (in Hindi).

Assorted Links for the Week (#6)

2012-05-21T11:03:00.000+05:30

Misc

In a humorous way, Larry Smith, Professor in economics, tells us why we would fail to have great careers.

Programming / Big Data

PyData 2012 workshop videos for those interested in Big Data and Python.
An expository article on Big Data, which in turn is an assembly of 15 articles.

Ironman's Technologies

2012-05-17T12:21:00.000+05:30

The Ironman has the following technologies in his armory:

Jarvis: Jarvis is a personal assistant computer program, able to receive commands in natural language from his patron Mr Stark. Mr Stark becomes the Ironman after he augments himself with the "Iron Uniform" and the necessary skills to handle it.
Dressing Up: In normal circumstances, the patron does not need to move his limbs in order to dress up or undress with the Ironman's uniform--all these functions are performed by robots. Jarvis can be asked to direct the Iron Uniform to fly and dress up the patron in mid-air in abnormal circumstances.
Functions of the Iron Uniform: The Iron Uniform is a wearable, motile dress with attached propellers for flying. The motility is enough to allow the patron to make a punch and hit the enemies; and to grasp and hold small and big objects. The Iron Uniform includes a digital display inside the helmet and also able to make telephone calls. And of course, there is no safety risk: the Iron Uniform saves the patron from external heat, including flames, and even gains energy from the heat thrown towards it. In Avengers, Ironman can also navigate deep under water.

Assorted Links for the Week (#5)

2012-05-17T12:20:00.000+05:30

Technology

Google includes a knowledge graph for search results. This was expected after Google acquired Freebase a few years back. Knowledge graphs, or "semantic search" as others would call it, is the next big technology on the forefront. This space of semantic search may get exhausted in 15 years, but currently this is a big opportunity for those who can pick up the gauntlet.

India

An excellent debate on media regulation in India, in particular whether there should be an independent regulatory authority for media. Recommended view.
The finance minister has indicated that austerity measures will be implemented to boost growth. This is in the light of the flight of foreign capital from the country, resulting in a fall of the value of rupee by more than 20% against the dollar in the last year. A die-hard optimist (like me) would expect that "proper", even though unpopular, economic measures would be implemented resulting in a greater efficiency within the economy in a few years. Hopefully, like in 1991, a crisis would not be wasted.

Environment

WWF has indicated in various terms that the current levels of human consumption is unsustainable: by 2030, even two earths won't suffice. I do not know who to believe, but it clearly is too much risk to play with the planet. And I am sure we are doing little or nothing towards this goal of survival.

Sachin: Bharat Ratna or MP?

2012-05-17T12:00:00.000+05:30

As per India.gov.in:

[Bharat Ratna] is awarded in recognition of exceptional service/performance of the highest
order in any field of human endeavour.

By this definition, Sachin seems to qualify for the award. Should Sachin be nominated as a Rajya Sabha MP? As per article 80 of the Constitution of India:

(1) The Council of States shall consist of
(a) twelve members to be nominated by the President in accordance with the provisions of clause ( 3 );
...
(3) The members to be nominated by the President under sub clause (a) of clause ( 1 ) shall consist of persons having special knowledge or practical experience in respect of such matters as the following, namely: Literature, science, art and social service.

Now it can be contested whether Sachin qualifies to be nominated.

Assorted Links of the Week (#4)

2012-05-04T22:17:00.001+05:30

Technology

Big data is BIG now. Analytics, data mining, and machine learning will find many more applications in the coming years. A company able to generate data, allow people to process data easily for profit, or visualize data, is going to be profitable. One such company Tagtile, which helps business connect with customers, and thus generate customer data, was recently acquired by Facebook.

Writing/English

This paper is about the diction and style command-line tools available on ubuntu/linux.

Misc

This is a disgusting video of an art work: "The African cake that cries when you eat it". (If there is) Anyone who does not already know the story (or stories?) behind it, would not understand it at all; and the others will shiver again.

Assorted Links for the Week (#3)

2012-04-28T15:31:00.000+05:30

Programming

Monad is an essential concept in functional programming that I have been trying to understand, and this tutorial by Mike Vanier is the simplest I have found till now. (Hopefully I will grasp the concept fully soon.)

Technology

News: Instagram was acquired by Facebook for a billion dollars.
Vagrant: Easier VM Management.

Misc

Lots of free, online courses at Coursera.
Where do people go when they drop out of the labor force?
A practical perspective about tackling Global Warming by Bjorn Lomborg.

Assorted Links for the Week (#2)

2012-04-08T12:57:00.005+05:30

English and Technical Writing

Notes by Knuth
And specifically about the usage of the passive voice in journals by Allen Downey.

Technology

Kiva systems, that builds robots for warehouses, was acquired by Amazon for more than $700 millions.
Design patterns in dynamic programming languages by Norvig.

India

In recent years, India has seen many new fundamental rights, such as the right to sleep, included into laws. However, the implementation still lags. A well-written article by NG Jayal.

Assorted Links of the Week

2012-03-31T20:58:00.001+05:30

English:

Nice site with good explanation of grammar-related issues. I particularly liked the section on the usage of articles.
Grammar Gaffe: The original heading of the linked article read '70% Indians in 30-69 age group fell prey to cancer in 2010'. Wow! Now they have fixed the heading.

World Economy:

Some recessions lead to permanent changes, others to temporary. Illustrative graphs.

Technology:

Inspiring talk about some of the cool new technologies developed by the US Defense organization DARPA like an artificial flying hummingbird.
If you liked the previous one, cool off with the flip side of the defense expenditure. Another awesome talk.
A new large-scale battery technology.

Data Science:

A list of publicly-available datasets.

India:

The list of Lok Sabha 2009 Election Winners, along with the criminal records of 162 of the members.

Topics in Knowledge Management

2012-02-04T17:26:00.001+05:30

Over the past few years, I have been struggling to keep up with a number of large and small subjects, such as, AI, programming languages, etc. There are multiple good information sources for these topics available nowadays -- my favorite is short lecture videos since it is fun and fast way to get an overview of topics and to learn new topics. My second favorite is online Q&A forums. But then there are also many excellent short and long articles available.

Remembering and recalling good information and sources about particular topics within the subjects had become very challenging. Further, one wants to quickly retrieve one's thoughts one had before on the topic. This seems to be adequately facilitated using the following strategy:

Maintain a set of notes -- one on each topic of your interest. Using a 2- or 3- column layout is useful like in cheatsheets.
When you read something, put it in the notes along with a link/reference to the source.
Use a facilitating tool like latex or if you prefer, doc, to be able to write mathematical formulae or other other items without struggling.

The strategy may appear trivial or simple, but the above strategy is essentially saying that there are no "shortcuts" in knowledge management. Previously I had used mind maps, blogging, etc., but none of these seem to work well. They put unneeded constraints on the writing style and retrieval, such as having to link topics in mindmaps, and a temporal order in case of blogging. I have been using the above strategy for a few months now, and it has worked quite well.

LinkedIn blurts, "All your contact are belong to us"

2012-01-29T23:30:00.004+05:30

Recently LinkedIn listed some folks who I met only once or twice in real life under "People You May Know". How could they manage to know so much about me?

My initial hypothesis was that my email provider sold my contacts to LinkedIn. But an internet search revealed that people using both Outlook and GMail were also complaining about this problem. It is unlikely that multiple email providers would have sold their contacts to LinkedIn.

After a little while of thinking, I figured there are several ways in which LinkedIn could know about me:

If I (or my frequent IP address) searched for a person X on a search engine and saw X's profile on LinkedIn, and X (or her frequent IP address) saw my profile on LinkedIn similarly -- this indicates that we both know each other.
If my frequent IP address is same as X's IP address (but is not a "popular" IP address, e.g., of a university) -- this indicates we were at the same location.
If X has imported her contacts list and I am a part of it.

It is an interesting puzzle to find even more ways in which LinkedIn can connect people. I am sure there are.

In practice, it is possible that they could have made a list of features such as the above. Then they would have run a machine learning algorithm on the historical data --- they've got the training set(!). That is, one year ago, what were the feature values, and then who connected with whom; this later is the training set. They do not need to solve the above puzzle manually.

Though LinkedIn has chosen to surprise us, one understands that they do have a lot of false positives, i.e., people that I do not know are shown in the list as well.

This short analysis shows that the other guys, our search engine guys and our social network guys, for example, can know a real lot more about us than we realize. Even if we delete our online accounts, we would be as anonymous as "no internet" only if we change our IP address (or use an anonymizer like Tor), never contact our (old) friends (including our relatives) again, and may be, live like an another personality. If we have our photos online, probably we need to never show our faces on the internet. All this will make the internet almost useless for us.

But probably we have already given up hope.

However, is it wise for LinkedIn to perform a "deep search" to spit out their recommendations for us? They do not seem to be concerned about people getting scared and deleting their accounts. Indeed, nobody seems to care about anonymity anymore.

A First (Bitter) Taste of C++0x

2012-01-19T21:08:00.006+05:30

I am not sure how many C++ programmers are looking forward to C++0x. Considering the fact that several of the new features are oriented towards making programming in C++ "more fun" than it already is (sarcasm intended), the conventional wisdom says that good programmers should welcome the next version of C++0x with open arms.

It might be premature to welcome C++0x with open arms. I got a bitter taste recently when a class in my program which worked fine before on gcc started needing a move constructor to function correctly when using the C++0x std::map (needless to mention the resulting crash was difficult to find and fix). That is, the move constructor is not needed (and won't even compile) if C++0x is not available. In turn this means that, the story that C++0x is "fully backward compatible" is true in theory but sometimes not in practice.

An experienced C++ programmer knows that there are no perfect (or, should I say unabused?) rules in C++. The idiom "you pay for only what you use" is another good-to-talk-about idiom that does not hold in reality. In reality, a programmer that doesn't want to use certain languages features might find it difficult or impossible to avoid such features. For example, one might want to use the concurrent programming-related libraries in C++0x without needing to use the other features such as std::move and std::forward. This seems to be too much to ask.

Another common case when a programmer is forced to use the language features that he or she does not want to, is when he or she wants to use a library that uses the unwanted feature. Often "wrapping" such a library to hide the unwanted features is impossible.

Some programmers say, "Only a madman uses all the features of C++". This is true to a large extent, given one has to read about 10-12 books to gain a medium level of expertise in the language (and now with C++0x we can safely add 3-4 more books). So, on the one hand, one can't be free from using all the existing features, and on the other hand, you become a mad man having to keep all these features in mind. Truly an adventurous land (probably you already saw a take on a map here), happy for those who have the time for the adventure.

Many More Online Lectures

2012-01-07T15:19:00.003+05:30

Earlier I blogged about free, online graduate level courses being offered by universities. On these lines, there is a plethora of course video lectures provided by top Indian universities (link) and US universities (e.g., link). We are seeing an explosion of the available and easily available knowledge, but still clearly it is just scratching the surface of possibilities enabled by the state-of-the-art technologies in the evolution of (higher) education.

Footnotes:

An inordinately large amount of focus in Indian higher education seems to be placed on the sciences and technologies, and very little on the humanities. This is reflected in the set of lectures as well.
There are multiple playlists of US university courses as there are many public and private US universities offering online course videos. This can be contrasted with one central playlist of Indian university courses offered by Ministry of Human Resource Development. There are still very few top-level private universities in India.

Changing the Door Lock / DIY

2011-12-25T22:55:00.002+05:30

This post is not a series of instructions for changing the door lock but some related discussions.

My door lock has worn out. I must change it before I move out from my house. Today I spent quite a bit of time trying to understand and learn how to change the door lock.

Unluckily, the "manual" of the door lock didn't make any sense (it may have been lost in translation from Chinese), and the online videos certainly helped but they focused not on the lock model I have and the problem I was trying to solve.

It was difficult for a non-genius to do it, but finally I am quite comfortable with "changing a door lock". The only equipment needed is a screw driver. I do not have the time to explain the process in writing, but here is a link.

I believe they should standardize the figures used in the documentations across brands and devices. For example, "action A" first when the "scene looks like this". Then "action B" when the "scene looks like this", and so on. In any case, nobody can enforce good explanations.

This episode is just another step in trying to be self-sufficient in terms of common household activities. Consulting plumbers, locksmiths and electricians (and yes, let's not forget, doctors) is a painful effort (particularly in my country of stay) and best avoided for common simple problems. For this, of course, one has to try to learn the subjects and try to avoid calling the consultants for the same ailment twice.

A primary reason for this situation is that such "short-lived" consultants do not have any strong economic motivation for being "good" to the principal (see, for example, this paper).

Given this situation, the best alternative for principals, it seems, is that they should be open to understand and verify, and yes, gaining knowledge is an important aspect. Much of such knowledge is available online for free. Particularly about medicine, it makes double sense to know more, not only because medical costs turn out to be huge when they do, and that it is very personal to know about our own body, but also because we can aim towards the invaluable goal of prolonging our lifetimes this way.

A New Wave in Higher Education?

2011-12-05T10:51:00.002+05:30

This year Stanford Univ had online free classes on AI and Machine Learning. Next year is exciting with many more online free courses.

Instructive Programming Language Talk

2011-11-26T14:58:00.000+05:30

Probably the most entertaining talk related to programming languages I have listened to, in this case Javascript mostly. The speaker is Douglas Crockford and has a (equally) nice website.

Web2py, Bottle, Python, C++, etc.

2011-10-09T19:39:00.002+05:30

I have started to use Python a lot for programming in the last few months. I have used C++ and Java extensively too before, but I now favor programming in Python.

Simplicity

Python has a simple and neat syntax, follows "Explicit is better than Implicit", has functional language constructs such as yield and lambda, other constructs like [f(x) for x in myList] that allow to write concise and easily understandable code.

Single .py files are python modules (directories are modules too) and it is usual to have many functions and classes within one module -- this is a huge win over the usual Java practice of putting only one class in one file. Indeed I can write an entire package worth of Java code within one .py file. Functions within functions, i.e., local functions are quite useful to reduce the complexity due to the number of functions in the module scope.

As a result of this degree of simplicity, I code using Python in a simple text editor such as vim, and do not have to load huge (but cool nevertheless) IDEs like Eclipse. I can run ctags that allows me to jump across to class and function definitions directly.

Nose, unit tests and doctests greatly simplify quality control of Python code. In the best spirit of literate programming, doctests serve both as documentation and simple tests. To make a nose-style test, I just need to write a function starting with "test" prefix.

Entering from the world of Java and C++, I was earlier making many more classes while using Python. Later, I found that just using functions was even simpler. Now, for many of the "data classes", I just instead use a dict containing tuples or arrays as values. It is easy to save the dict into a file using a single function call dumps using the Json module, or just use Pickle.

Python Code is not Compiled

Since Python code is not compiled, there is a higher dependence on tests for catching problems -- such as -- wrong function being called after some code was refactored. Therefore, having tests and a running test-suite is more or less required. The Pyflakes tool allows to find unused imports and "undefined functions". PEP8 is widely used by python developers as a coding standard and a tool supports it. See this discussion, for example.

Web Frameworks

Recently I used Bottle Web Framework for an application, and I am pretty happy about having selected it, till now. The reason I selected a micro-framework such as Bottle, rather than likes of Web2py or Django is that I did not need to have an elaborate database usage, neither much client-side/javascript views, as the server communicated (only) with our iPhone app that handled all the formatting. I used the simple sqlite3 database interface.

Another framework that looks quite exciting is Web2py. It has a long list of "goodies" that are difficult to find elsewhere (For those who know Web2py, I am referring to DAL, CRUD, HTML Helpers, and including Python code in HTML, to name a few). These goodies are supported by a clean adherence to the popular MVC pattern. (There are very few popular good things, and when this happens we should consider ourselves fortunate. Disclaimer: I have not made a detailed analysis of the alternatives to MVC.)

Personal Bias

There are not many languages that I have liked long from the day I started using that language. C and Perl do not belong there, for the same reason "bash" does not. The reason -- without going into too much details -- is that it is easy to make mistakes in these languages, to the point it gets frustrating. I like C++ -- but probably since I started using it quite early -- in school, and I learnt it before I could dislike it. But C++ certainly is easier for me to use than C, for any large projects.

C++ is a huge, complex language that should be used only where Python cannot.

Efficiency Issues in Future

Multicore computer architecture is a primary aspect of the future of computing. Probably at least 20% of the programmers will be writing parallel programs at a point of time. It is difficult to get parallel programs correct as well as high-performance -- and this is where functional programming shines. Hand-wavingly speaking and to cut a long story short, in pure functional programming languages, there are no side-effects of function calls, such as "modifying the state of an object". Therefore, it is easier to reason about such functions. More on this in a subsequent blog entry.

C++ has made a huge turn with C++0x towards supporting and simplifying constructs useful in functional programming and parallel programming, and programming in general. C++ allows the programmer to get the most bang for the buck when performance is primary.

Python is stuck with GIL -- Global Interpreter Lock -- that allows only one thread to run at a time. Instead, Python, like Erlang, depends on (the heavier but safer approach of) multiple processes to exploit multicore parallelism via the Multiprocessing library -- this is explained well in this tutorial. But there is also Stackless Python, which looks like an interesting approach (in line with task-based approach implemented by the fabulous Intel TBB C++ Library for Multicore).

Then there is LLVM for C++ and PyPy for Python. LLVM currently performs Profile-Guided Optimization while PyPy performs Just-in-Time (JIT) Compilation (LLVM may implement JIT later). In the long run, these modern approaches are likely to outperform the static compilation approaches.