benchmark

[sturlamolden]

On Aug 7, 2:05 am, "Jack" <nos... at invalid.com> wrote:
> I know one benchmark doesn't mean much but it's still disappointing to see
> Python as one of the slowest languages in the test:
>
> http://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2008/07/performance-comparison-c-java-p...


And how does this reflect the performance of real world Python
programs?

Google uses Python to run the YouTube web site. NASA uses Python to
process image data from the Hubble space telescope. Would they do that
if Python was unbearably sluggish? Do you get faster downloads from a
bittorrent client written in Java (e.g. Azureus) than the original
BitTorrent client (a Python program)?

Using a high level language efficiently is an art. The key is using
Python's built-in data types and extension libraries (e.g. PIL and
NumPy). That is the opposite of what authors of these 'benchmarks'
tend to do.




It seems the majority of these 'benchmarks' are written by people who
think like C++ programmers.