Improving interpreter startup speed

[Paul Boddie]

On 29 Okt, 13:55, bearophileH... at lycos.com wrote:
> Terry Reedy:
>
> > The current developers, most of whom use Python daily, [...]
>
> Thank you for bringing some light in this thread so filled with worse
> than useless comments.

Indeed. Observing that CGI is old-fashioned, aside from not really
helping people who choose or are obliged to use that technology,
doesn't detract from arguments noting various other areas where start-
up performance is worth improving (in build environments, for example,
as someone suggested), nor does it address the more basic issue of why
Python issues as many system calls as it does when starting up,
something which has actually been looked at by the core developers
(indicating that it isn't a waste of time as one individual claimed)
as well as by developers in other projects where application start-up
time has been criticised.

Although people are using multi-GHz CPUs on the desktop, there are
environments where it is undesirable for Python to go sniffing around
the filesystem just for the fun of it. In fact, various embedded
projects have employed some kind of daemon for Python in order to get
Python-based programs started quickly enough - something that I'm sure
plenty of people would ridicule if, say, Java were involved. The
better solution would just involve improving the obvious: the start-up
performance.

Paul