why python is slower than java?

[Maurice LING]

Mainly to Alex and the rest of the adjitated community,

[snip about Melbourne club scene]

I do understand what you meant. There are restrictions in giving out 
data (codes) in many cases and I seek your understanding.

Nevertheless, I do feel that you had unfairly made use of this case to 
voice out your accumulated dissatisfaction with answering newbies 
questions.

In later parts of this thread (after your post), it was suggested that 
my errorous impressions might have been formed by books and publications 
(such as "learning python", as suggested)...... I do not seek to place 
blame on anyone for my misconceptions. But considering a person trying 
to learn a new programming language, it is common that the person takes 
in what is presented in the face, especially from books such as, 
"Learning python" and "Python, the complete reference".

> Does this imply you now believe that the unquestioned-assumptions behind
> your "why" questions were unfounded?
> 
Now I will say that Python is comparable to Java in terms of disk I/O.


> 
> Forming a wrong impression is always a possibility.  It's proceeding to
> take it for granted as an obvious fact, that is quite questionable.  If
> you had phrased your observation in terms such as "I have gotten the
> impression, without having done any measurement myself, that" etc, the
> reactions would have been vastly different; your choice to express
> yourself by implying an unquestionable fact existed and only required
> explanations of its reasons, is a good part of the reaction's cause.
> 
My apologies for raising your blood pressure, take care.

> 
> 
> False: not all knowledge in the world can be usefully embodied in print
> (text, images, even videos and sound recordings actualy).  An important
> part of human knowledge is experiential, and only a shadow of that
> important part can be captured in libraries, including multimedia ones.
> 
> Many universities, as a part of their mission, conduct research and
> therefore presumably generate new knowledge.  This entirely self-evident
> and obvious fact, even by itself, makes your assertion doubly absurd:
> "all knowledge is out there" readily implies there is no knowledge to be
> added, and "all universities are complete waste of money" similarly
> implies no university is generating new knowledge, or what they do
> generate is utterly worthless.

Perhaps I should rephase it as known knowledge so far.
> 
> Your assertion that "by my argument" (which had never touched anywhere
> upon the research role of universities) research is nonexistent, futile,
> or entirely worthless, is at the same time absurd and deeply insulting.
> If and when I want to criticize university research, I will do so
> myself, and I do not AT ALL appreciate this attempt to put words in my
> mouth, even though any reader with a 3-digits IQ can see it as the
> insulting absurdity it is.
> 
> If we stick to the _teaching_ role of universities, the reasons my
> arguments imply nothing like you're stating are both more interesting
> and subtler.  On one hand, there is the experiential side of knowledge.
> By conducting experiments in a laboratory under proper guidance, even
> though those experiments are not novel, students acquire knowledge
> experientially -- a very different learning mechanism from reading books
> and articles, or listening to lectures.  Of course, good high schools
> have laboratories etc, too, but in University, at least in scientific
> and technical disciplines, the experiential learning process _should_
> blossom to a far higher degree (if it doesn't -- if a university skimps
> on labs and overwhelms students with just books and lectures -- then
> that may well be a valid ground for criticism, _of that particular
> university's choice in didactics_, of course, not "of all
> universities").  In other disciplines, experiential learning may be less
> obvious, but if the university is any good, it will be there.
> 
> And then, there is the issue of selection and structuring.  I have
> posted about that recently, in a thread asking whether there was a book
> about large-scale software development with Python, and you can easily
> look it up on google groups.  To summarize: I have lots of materials on
> the subject.  I find I'm easily able to organize these materials into
> courses and workshops that are specifically aimed at an identified group
> of students, with certain backgrounds and interests.  Organizing the
> same material into a _book_ is a far harder task, one which I can't take
> the time off to undertake at present... which ties back to a _part_ of
> the reason why not all knowledge is in books or other printed or
> otherwise 'frozen' (recorded, filmed, ...) forms.  A vast majority of
> the materials I collected IS out there -- over the years, I've posted a
> goodly fraction of it.  But it's generally unselected and unstructured,
> making the learning task far more daunting than proper structuring and
> selection can potentially make it.
> 
> A good university course has selection and structuring, and is
> interactive in a way a book can never be, thus potentially making the
> s&s more appropriate and effective for the specific individual students
> who are taking that course wrt books (or some other well-organized
> subset of info from the net).  Of course, if you throw 500 students at a
> poor professor, no matter how good he is, his ability to teach a really
> good course will be impaired -- smaller classes are MUCH better that way
> (another valid criticism of the way many universities are structured).
> 
> Usenet does have the interactivity advantage, but normally not the
> structuring one, with rare exceptions, and only to some extent the
> selection one.  Thus, it can complement rather than substitute for
> books, courses, and information search on the raw net.  It has little
> experiential value, though not zero -- _some_ of the interaction on it
> does work to stimulate and vaguely guide/aim some experiences.
> 
> 
> 
>>As mentioned, the discussion is heading else where and my misconceptions
>>cleared before your replies. If I've indeed forgotten, my sincere 
>>apologies and hereby thank you for your time and efforts.
> 
> 
> Thanks, this is appreciated.  I take it then that you do not any longer
> opine that on disk-I/O intensive programs Python is self-evidently
> slower than Java?
> 
> 
>>You still have the right to remain solemn.
> 
> 
> Heh, nice.  Well, it's a right I surely exercise far more often than the
> more traditional one of remaining silent;-).
> 
> 
> Alex

All in all, through all these discussions, I can safely assert that 
Python and Java are comparable in disk I/O. And a part of the original 
misconceptions might have been formed possibly out-dated printed 
materials which are still references for new python programmers. It is 
then my concern that such misconceptions may be perpentuated.

I admit and apologise for my poor phrasing of questions which sparked 
this chain of events. We had all lost some cool along the way and some 
harsh words flew. Alex, I do hope you will accept my apologies. I 
suppose I am pissed off when the flare is targetted towards myself and 
not the situation. Anyway, my apologies...

maurice