"Nick Maclaren" <nmm1 at cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message news:E1FqzHB-00003X-UV at draco.cus.cam.ac.uk... > experience from times of yore is that emulated floating-point would > be fast enough that few, if any, Python users would notice. Perhaps you should enquire on the Python numerical and scientific computing lists to see how many feel differently. I don't see how someone crunching numbers hours per day could not notice a slowdown. tjr