Python Worst Practices

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 1:08 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> but overall, I think it's fair to say that IronPython is about 1.8 times the
> speed of CPython.
>
>
>> With any other implementation language, it would have ground to a halt.
>
> That's laughably inaccurate.

I'm sure that Python could have been implemented in FORTRAN without
losing performance. Conversely, I'm sure Python could also have been
implemented on top of BASIC if someone felt like it, though what the
advantages might be I have no idea. But performance is not (or should
not be) the primary reason for choosing a language. Imagine if all
your Python code ran twice as fast (that's slightly better than the
IronPython figure quoted!), but worked only on BSD Unix and Mac OS. Is
that something that'll make a fledgling language succeed? Or would
universality, even at the cost of performance, lead to a greater
userbase and development team, which ultimately would result in far
greater improvements in both functionality and performance?

ChrisA