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

[Marko Rauhamaa]

BartC <bc at freeuk.com>:

> And forgetting Python for a minute and concentrating only on its
> byte-code as a language in its own right, how would you go about the
> job of streamlining it?

CPython's bytecode is not crucial for CPython's execution speed. The
bytecode is mainly a method of improving the performance of loading
modules. IOW, it seeks to optimize parsing.

CPython's VM does not have to execute the bytecode as-is. It can further
compile and reprocess it internally to optimize speed and other
attributes.

As far as CPython is considered, a .pyc file contains precisely the same
information as the .py file. Thus, executing .pyc is no faster than
executing a .py file (ignoring the parsing overhead). The only advantage
of streamlining bytecode is to speed up load times, which is a complete
nonissue in most production environments.

Really, your optimization efforts should concentrate not on bytecode but
on runtime data structures, algorithms, heuristics, equivalence
transformations, reachability analysis, profiling and such.


Marko