Python as a numerical prototyping language.

[Mark Dufour]

> Improvement in computer speeds will do nothing to the performance gap
> between Python and a compiled language running on the same computer. I

Computer speeds in itself will not help much in closing the gap, but that was 
not what I meant. When computers become faster though, it becomes possible do 
shift more and more optimization techniques into run-time. Java does a lot of 
optimization during run-time, as does Psyco. I don't think these would have 
been acceptible were computers much slower than they are today. Psyco and 
Java both require enormous amounts of memory too I believe, especially Psyco, 
although that's improving.

> could make them irrelevant because both are fast enough. This is already
> true for Python on modern processors for all but a handful of compute-
> intensive applications - the original subject of this thread.

Absolutely, Python will become more and more viable, and hence more popular, 
just because of computers becoming faster all the time. Sort of like how C 
and some other languages I forgot became more popular than assembly language, 
I guess :-)


Thanks,
Mark Dufour.
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