Python too slow?

[bearophileHUGS at lycos.com]

Paul Boddie:
> what is everyone with any degree of
> concern about Python's performance doing to improve the situation?

They are probably developing systems like Cython and ShedSkin, and
hoping to see Psyco improved again to manage itertools better (and
maybe 64 bit CPUs too).


> Sure, C (or actually C++) seems to win the shootout [1],

Beside C++ being the faster (not C anymore), there are other ways to
"win" the Shootout, like using less RAM, writing shorter code, etc. If
you change the way you measure you can see that FreePascal, Ruby and D
too "win" the Shootout :-) (the first as the one using less memory,
the second one as the one with shorter programs, and the third one as
"faster && with shorter programs").


> but there are
> plenty of language implementations between g++ and CPython to suggest
> that the old choice of extension modules written in C vs. other code
> written in Python doesn't provide a complete map of the opportunities.

I think in few years it may become feasible to use Pyd to write
extensions in D for CPython :-)

Bye,
bearophile