python simply not scaleable enough for google?

[Paul Boddie]

On 16 Nov, 05:51, sturlamolden <sturlamol... at yahoo.no> wrote:
>
> NASA can find money to build a space telescope and put it in orbit.
> They don't find money to create a faster Python, which they use for
> analyzing the data.

Is the analysis in Python really what slows it all down?

> Google is a multi-billion dollar business. They are using Python
> extensively. Yes I know about Unladen Swallow, but why can't they put
> 1 mill dollar into making a fast Python?

Isn't this where we need those Ohloh figures on how much Unladen
Swallow is worth? ;-) I think Google is one of those organisations
where that Steve Jobs mentality of shaving time off a once-per-day
activity actually pays off. A few more cycles here and there is
arguably nothing to us, but it's a few kW when running on thousands of
Google nodes.

> And then there is IBM and Cern's Blue Brain project. They can set up
> the fastest supercomputer known to man, but finance a faster Python?
> No...

Businesses and organisations generally don't spend any more money than
they need to. And if choosing another technology is cheaper for future
work then they'll just do that instead. In a sense, Python's
extensibility using C, C++ and Fortran have helped adoption of the
language considerably, but it hasn't necessarily encouraged a focus on
performance.

Paul