Turing Compliant?

[Sean Mc Grath]

>[Kristopher Johnson]
>> But can Python efficently solve the Traveling Salesman Problem,
>> or other NP-complete problems?
>
>If it were thought possible to solve such things efficiently, they wouldn't
>be NP-complete <0.5 wink>.
>
[Tim Peters]
>TSP in particular has had person-centuries of intellectual effort tossed at
>it, and the best algorithms known will certainly run faster in almost
>anything other than Python.
>

I have had a situation where an NP complete problem was being
tackled in which the speed of Python was raised as an issue.
Suggestions were made that the algorithm be rewritten in
something faster like C.

The danger in this line of thinking is not realizing that the
computational effort involved in big NP complete problems
is *so* huge that even in optimized micro-code, the
algorithm might take a million years to run.

Tweezers or shovel -- it makes little difference when you
are trying to move a universe...

regards,