python speed

[Xavier Morel]

James Tanis wrote:
> Quite honestly I've never heard of java being faster than.. well..
> anything.  Faster than Python? I really doubt it. Their are several
> libraries for game programming specifically as well as opengl, sdl, as
> well as several different audio systems/daemons.. I'd suggest browsing
> through the categories in python.org's module search engine.
> 
> Disclaimer (:P): The majority of generalizations have some amount of
> exceptions, the java crack above was just my opinion - it was not
> really intended to offend any java addicts out there (the poor,
> miss-guided souls).
> 

While java is much slower than Python in developer-time (e.g. the time 
it takes to generate a working app, and the number of lines involved), 
(good) Java code running on the hotspot (JIT) VM is usually at least an 
order of magnitude faster than the equivalent Python code, if not faster.

What's dog slow in Java is primarily the VM startup, and then the memory 
bloating, but as far as execution speed goes, pure Java code is much 
faster than pure Python much more often than the opposite (now that may 
change with Pypy, but Pypy is not done yet)

Xavier