New Python User Question about Python.

[Steve Holden]

"Paul Rubin" <phr-n2001 at nightsong.com> wrote in message
news:7xvgjf6wee.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com...
> Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
[ ... ]
>
> > and there is little interest in improving its speed compared to
> > improvements in other areas.
>
> There seems to be considerable interest in Python's speed in this
> newsgroup, I've been happy to find :)
>
... and if interest were convertedinto action something might happen. Alas
most of the interest is in seeing other people do the work. If you're
interested in speed, and want a comiler, the fastest way to get one is to
start working on it yourself.

> > Python programmers tend to adopt a philosophy of making code work
> > rather than making code fast.  Given a choice of doing one or the
> > other, any reasonable person would pick the former.
>
> That is a platitude.  To paraphrase Jon Bentley: whatever computer
> system you're currently using to surf the web has hundreds of known,
> but minor, bugs.  If a fairy godmother appeared before each user and
> gave them one wish, and they had to choose between eliminating the
> bugs or making their surfing experience 100 times faster, do you
> really think every reasonable person would decline the speedup?  SPEED
> MATTERS.  From a user's point of view it sometimes matters even more
> than correctness.
>
Nonsense. In the cases where correctness is important, nothing will
substitute for it. When correctness isn't important, what is? A program
which gives me the wrong answers in a tenth of the time is of no interest to
me. Ask an accountant how much speedup would compensate for an unbalanced
ledger.

"Minor bugs" are irritating but acceptable not because they produce
"slightly wrong" answers, but because sometimes they don't produce answers
when they should. But I suppose you think I'm not being reasonable here...

[ ... ]

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/