[Python-Dev] 2.4 news reaches interesting places

[Gregory P. Smith]

On Wed, Dec 08, 2004 at 02:18:48PM -0800, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> I was pleasantly surprised to find a pointer to this article in a news
> digest that the ACM emails me regularly (ACM TechNews).
> 
> http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/28026-1.html
> 
> One thing that bugs me: the article says 3 or 4 times that Python is
> slow, each time with a refutation ("but it's so flexible", "but it's
> fast enough") but still, they sure seem to harp on the point. This is
> a PR issue that Python needs to fight -- any ideas?

All high level dynamic languages need to fight this.  Substitute
python for perl, php, ruby, tcl and the statements in that article
still apply.  They'll all have slower execution times (on avg) their
compiled or JITed bretheren.

I suggest reading that article in a different light:  The point of
view of the people who are likely to believe what they read in
government computer news is that it just confirmed that python is a
useful languange for getting the job done easily.  Not that one
shouldn't use it because "its slow."

--
All new Python 2.4, now with blue crystals!