Python is far from a top performer according to benchmark test...

[Tim Churches]

On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 08:13, Krzysztof Stachlewski wrote:
> "Carl" <phleum_nospam at chello.se> wrote in message
> news:ryELb.238$tK2.228 at amstwist00...
> 
> > I have been experimenting with numerical algorithms in Python with a heavy
> > use of the Numeric module. My experience is that Python is quite fast in
> > comparison with (and sometimes as fast as) traditional languages such as C
> > or C++.
> 
> With "heavy use of Numeric module" you were calling functions
> written in C. So how can you say that Python is fast,
> when C code is doing all the work.

Well, yes, but the Python VM is also written in C, and every time you
make a call to a dictionary, or list etc, it is C code which is doing
all the work. If you like, you could say that Python is a set of
extremely clever wrappers around a bunch of optimised C code - but that
rather diminishes the achievement of Python. I dare say that the
Microsoft .NET and Visual Basic VMs are also written in C/C++, so you
could say the same things about them - but I don't think that is a
useful perspective.
-- 

Tim C

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