[Python-Dev] Re: Re: 2.4 news reaches interesting places

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 20:36:45 -0500, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-12-12 at 12:32, Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
> 
> > For those who believe that a non-profit project should not do any
> > marketing, a reminder. If the perception about Python is one of a slow
> > language, it's much more difficult to find places where you can use
> > Python. In the long run, many of us may be forced to work with other
> > languages & tools, just because that's where the money is. I
> > personally take it a matter of personal interest, because I know how
> > hard it is to "sell" Python to companies here in Brazil.
> 
> Actually, there's another problem in the corporate world that has
> nothing to do with Python's performance (at least not directly).  When a
> manager has to hire 25 programmers for a project they think to
> themselves, "well, Java programmers are a dime a dozen so I'll have no
> problem finding warm bodies if we write it in Java.  Can I even /find/
> 25 Python programmers?"

You're right, specially for big corporations. But in the end, we're
just running in circles: it's hard to get new programmers to learn
Python, partly because it's in low demand, and partly because the
language has an totally undeserved fame of being slow. That's right -
when I talk to fellow programmers that I'm writing software in Python,
many of them are amazed and ask me, "but isn't it slow?". I've heard
it more than once... having some place that I could point them out so
they could check it for themselves (perhaps "www.pythonspeed.com"?)
would be *great*.

IMHO, Python performance is not an issue 99% of the time. I swear I
can say the same about C++. The difference between C++ and Python is
not how fast they are relatively to each other, but *where* the slow
part is. Anyone who tried to write complex code in any other language
knows that most programmers usually resort to slow but easy to
implement algorithms for things such as sorting, list handling, etc;
these parts of the code are naturally fast in Python, while others may
be faster in C++... so we're just trading "6 for half a dozen", as we
say in portuguese :-)


-- 
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: carribeiro at gmail.com
mail: carribeiro at yahoo.com