Is Python lightweight?

[kk]

Cliff Wells <LogiplexSoftware at earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.1054940353.6636.python-list at python.org>...
> On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 15:39, kk wrote:
> > I just read a comment to an article claiming that an application
> > sucked, and the reason was because it was written in Python.  It went
> > on to say that it pulls in some 40MB (I assume into memory), and
> > insinuated that it was "bloat-ware". In case you really care, the
> > application they were talking about is Redhat's "Up To Date" (software
> > update tool).
> 
> Was this on a RH mailing list?  Which one?  I haven't flamed anyone on
> any of the RH lists in a couple of weeks and this seems like a good time
> to get back into the swing <cracks knuckle>.  There are a
> disproportionate number of monkeys pounding on keyboards on a few of
> those lists.  I'd always thought Linux users would be... well, never
> mind.  Apparently the surge in Linux popularity has its downside as
> well.
> 
> > I know this is a silly argument, and I should forget about it. 
> > However, I really have fallen in love with Python even though I
> > haven't been doing it very long.  So, I've been thinking... How would
> > you measure the amount of "bloat" that an application has, on windows?
> >  On Linux?  Has anyone compared the Python interpreter "foot-print" to
> > Java, Perl, PHP, VB, etc... I guess if you had a GUI then you would
> > have to add the size of the GUI libraries (and with Tk, the TCL
> > interpreter).
> 
> Bloatware can be written in any language.  Most likely they are keeping
> huge amounts of data in RAM (dependency trees?) and this has little to
> do with Python.
> 
> Of course, the alternative to bloatware is often noware.  If RH wasn't
> using Python for a lot of their administrative tools (and installer)
> then it seems quite likely that a large number of those tools wouldn't
> even exist.  I can only imagine how complicated up2date would be were it
> written in C.
> 
> > Anyway, my question is, how can I measure this for myself?
> 
> Start Python (without running any Python scripts).  Check memory usage. 
> Anything above and beyond that is the application's fault.  Well, not
> entirely, but you get the idea.

Maybe I should re-format my question. What tool should I use to
measure the memory usage?  On Windows XP, I have tried Performance
Monitor, and it doesn't have anything obvious to me.  I'm sure I just
don't know how to use it properly.  Is there another tool?  Is there
an API call that could tell me memory usage at any given point,
preferably by process?

The post was a response to the following article:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3714