Java vs Python

[Erno Kuusela]

>>>>> "Roman" == Roman Milner <roman at speeder.org> writes:

>>>>> "HD" == Huy Do <huy at nsw.bigpond.net.au> writes:
    HD> Hi, I would just like to know how serious python is taken in
    HD> the IT industry and how it compares to something like Java.

    HD> 3 Which is faster eg. Java servlets or Python CGI with
    HD> mod_python ?

cgi is usually a bit slow, whether you use it to run java or python
or perl or cobol programs.

    Roman> Don't know about that - but there is some strong evidence
    Roman> that Zope (python based application server) is faster than
    Roman> servelets:

    Roman> http://www.zope.org/Members/BwanaZulia/zope_benchmarks/tomcat1.html

here is the output for httpdapy
(ab -n 1000 -c 25 http://localhost/httpdapy/httpdapitest.py):

This is ApacheBench, Version 1.2
Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright (c) 1998 The Apache Group, http://www.apache.org/

Server Software:        Apache/1.3.9                                       
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /httpdapy/httpdapitest.py
Document Length:        2009 bytes

Concurrency Level:      25
Time taken for tests:   2.303 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      2216424 bytes
HTML transferred:       2013018 bytes
Requests per second:    434.22
Transfer rate:          962.41 kb/s received

but this is on a dual p2/500 gnu/linux machine so it
is not directly comparable.

    HD> Please do not interpret this message as an excuse to discredit
    HD> java or python. I am about to start a major web project using
    HD> Java but have been referred to python as an alternative so I
    HD> am investigating this option.

i would guess python is probably more fun as it is a higher level language.

    Roman> I think any major web project should consider Zope.  It has
    Roman> transformaed the way I think of web development.  FWIW, I
    Roman> work at a moderate sized telco and we do all of our web
    Roman> sites in Zope.

agreed. zope is cool. people get all too axcuted about web
benchmarks, when in reality most platforms are "fast enough".

  -- erno