Python too slow for real world
Paul Prescod
paul at prescod.net
Mon Apr 26 18:09:09 EDT 1999
Roy Smith wrote:
>
> Paul Prescod <paul at prescod.net> wrote:
> > It is a performance issue if you don't know that regexps are supposed to
> > be compiled.
>
> I hope this doesn't sound as bad as I fear it might, but part of being a
> good programmer (or at least a good computer scientist) is to understand
> performance issues like this.
No doubt. But Python is not designed to be a programming language
exclusively for good programmers or computer scientists. As I understand
the design, it also caters to those that are new programmers and to those
that don't want to worry about any more details than they absolutely have
to.
> If you
> don't understand that factoring the expensive constant compilation process
> out of a loop is important to make your program run fast, you aren't a
> good programmer. No programming language can help that.
That is absolutely not true. It is, however, a common myth. A programming
language can have default behaviours that support beginning programmers.
Python does that in most cases.
In the last Perl/Python flame war someone used the analogy of clumsiness.
Sure, a clumsy person could kill themself with a dull knife but that
doesn't mean that a loaded gun and a dull knife are equally dangerous.
I'm not promoting any particular language change here. I'm arguing against
the throw-your-hands-in-the-air-and-expect-programmers-to-be-experts
argument that is used to shout down any change that makes the language
easier for non-experts. That's the design philosophy that gives rise to
other languages that start with P: "You mean you aren't familiar with the
string interpolation conventions of the C-shell and the input argument
defaulting of Awk?"
--
Paul Prescod - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco
Company spokeswoman Lana Simon stressed that Interactive
Yoda is not a Furby. Well, not exactly.
"This is an interactive toy that utilizes Furby technology,"
Simon said. "It will react to its surroundings and will talk."
- http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/19222.html
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