python simply not scaleable enough for google?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:35:23 -0800, Joel Davis wrote:

> obviously the GIL is a major reason it's so slow. 

No such "obviously" about it.

There have been attempts to remove the GIL, and they lead to CPython 
becoming *slower*, not faster, for the still common case of single-core 
processors.

And neither Jython nor IronPython have the GIL. Jython appears to scale 
slightly better than CPython, but for small data sets, is slower than 
CPython. IronPython varies greatly in performance, ranging from nearly 
twice as fast as CPython on some benchmarks to up to 6000 times slower!

http://www.smallshire.org.uk/sufficientlysmall/2009/05/22/ironpython-2-0-and-jython-2-5-performance-compared-to-python-2-5/

http://ironpython-urls.blogspot.com/2009/05/python-jython-and-ironpython.html


Blaming CPython's supposed slowness on the GIL is superficially plausible 
but doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The speed of an implementation depends 
on many factors, and it also depends on *what you measure* -- it is sheer 
nonsense to talk about "the" speed of an implementation. Different tasks 
run at different speeds, and there is no universal benchmark.


-- 
Steven