YATOPS (Yet Another Thread on Python's Speed) (was Re: HELP! Must choose language!)

[Dave Brueck]

On Thu, 2 Jan 2003, Peter Hansen wrote:

> Yu Wang wrote:
> >
> > For commercial usage, ( sorry, I would say it twice ), python program is
> > simple, clear, maintainable..., but it's slow.
>
> As a developer of commercial software written in Python, I have to say
> that Yu Wang's statement about Python's speed is simply not always true.
> I would even venture to suggest that it is only rarely true.

Here here! Plus, there's a lot more to performance than just CPU
performance. Our commercial Python software is network bound first, disk
bound second, and CPU bound third (meaning, under most circumstances CPU
speed isn't an issue, so neither is Python).

IOW, with some of our stuff we _do_ have some performance requirements
(e.g. "need to sustain X Mbps of traffic throughput across Y
connections..") and our pure Python apps meet the requirements quite well.

 -Dave