Python was designed (was Re: Multi-threading in Python vs Java)

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> Even using vanilla CPython, you can write pure
> Python code that (for example) checks over 12,000 nine-digit integers for
> primality per second, on a relatively old and slow computer. If that's
> not *fast*, nothing is.

Agreed. I used to do my major numeric calculations in OS/2 REXX, which
served me quite well in the 1990s. But Python smokes it, even the
oh-so-slow Python 3 where every integer is a bignum (which is fair
comparison against REXX, where every number is... uhh... a string). A
modern, optimized language, even one that's perceived as "slow", is
able to do many orders of magnitude more calculations per second than
a human can.... okay, that's hardly fair, but it's about the only
absolute we're ever going to get :)

ChrisA