to py or not to py ?

[Serge Orlov]

On 6/27/06, Chandrashekhar kaushik <shekhar.kaushik at gmail.com> wrote:
> HI all
> I have the following prob.
> I am to write a parallel vis application .
> I wud have by default used C++ for the same but somehow
> thought if py cud help me ..
> It does as in many things that i would otherwise have written down
> already exists ... ( like built in classes for sockets , threading etc )
>
> I would be doin the following type of tasks ..
>
> 1. sending data across the network
>     the data is going to be huge
>
> 2. once data has been sent i will run some vis
>     algos parallely on them and get the results
>
> now one thing that i wud req. is serializing my data structures so that
> they can be sent across the net.
>
> pyton does allow this using cPickle , but it bloats the data like anythin
> !!!
> for example a class containing 2 integers which i expect will be 8 bytes
> long ..
> cPickle.dumps returns a string thats 86 bytes wide !!!! ( this is the binary
> version protocol 1 )
>
> anyway to improve serialization ??

Do it yourself using struct module.

> also is it actually a good idea to write high perf applications in python ?

Take a look at Mercurial <http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/> sources.
It's a high performance python application. Or watch Bryan
O'Sullivan's Mercurial presentation
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7724296011317502612> he
talks briefly how they made it work fast.

But writing high performance application in python requires
self-discipline and attention to details, looking at the way you spell
I think it will be a challenge ;)