The Cost of Dynamism (was Re: Pyhon 2.x or 3.x, which is faster?)

[Mark Lawrence]

On 12/03/2016 16:42, BartC wrote:
> On 12/03/2016 15:30, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 2:12 AM, BartC <bc at freeuk.com> wrote:
>
>>> However, I was going to revise my benchmark to use strings instead of
>>> integers, to show how much slower they would be. But the program was 10%
>>> faster with strings!
>
>>> So there's something funny going on. Either string operations are
>>> super-fast
>>> or integer operations are somehow crippled. Or maybe there so many other
>>> overheads, that the difference between strings and ints is lost.
>
>> Or maybe they're all actually *object* comparisons,
>
> Yeah, that explains it!
>
>   and what you know
>> about assembly language has no relationship to what's going on here.
>> This is why we keep advising you to get to know *Python*,
>
> I'm not sure /my/ knowing Python better is going to help it get any faster.
>
> I discovered something that might be a clue to what's going on, but
> you're content to just brush it under the carpet.
>
> OK.
>

For a language that is apparently so slow that is unusable, it somehow 
has managed to get a following.  From https://www.python.org/about/success/

<quote>
Python is part of the winning formula for productivity, software 
quality, and maintainability at many companies and institutions around 
the world. Here are 41 real-life Python success stories, classified by 
application domain.
</quote>

So I am clearly not the only programmer in the world who couldn't care 
less about speed.

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence