[issue43511] tkinter with Tk 8.6.11 is slow on macOS

[Thomas Wamm]

Thomas Wamm <thomaswamm at gmail.com> added the comment:

I spent a few hours running numerous configurations (M1 Mac Mini, iMac24-2007, Win10 on i5-8250U, Raspberry Pi 4B, various Pythons from 3.7.3 to 3.10.0a6). It can get confusing. 
The primary interesting result is that Python 3.9.2 and 3.10.0a6 arm64 versions on M1 Mac Mini are the absolute worst performers by factors of 2 to 15, when relying on tkinter/Tcl/Tk for windows or graphics. Any Python3 on Windows 10 on an Intel i5 was at least 8x faster than the M1 Mac.  Intel Python 3.9.2 beats arm64 Python 3.9.2 or 3.10.0a6.  The problem is somewhere in the tkinter/Tcl/Tk layers or their connection to MacOS and arm64.  Python 3.7.3 on Raspberry OS (Linux) performs in the middle between slow MacOS and fast Windows.
The fastest configuration I found on the M1 Mac was Python 3.8.2 (Intel code) in combination with deprecated Tcl/Tk 8.5.9; that config was about 8x faster than 3.9.2 arm64 with Tcl/Tk 8.6.11.

The simplest qualitative performance test is just use 
>>> help('modules')   (in IDLE vs. python in a Terminal window) 
though my TerraLunar.py graphics program can give quantitative results.

The Turtle graphics demo programs in IDLE also perform slow on the M1 Mac.

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<https://bugs.python.org/issue43511>
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