Python and the need for speed

[Rick Johnson]

On Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 4:56:27 AM UTC-5, Brecht Machiels wrote:
> On 2017-04-11 08:19:31 +0000, Steven D'Aprano said:
>
> > On Sun, 09 Apr 2017 19:05:35 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

[...]

> > The Python ecosystem is actually quite healthy, if you
> > need to speed up code there are lots of solutions, and
> > some of them are even good solutions.
>
> There seem to be no solutions for my use case (rinohtype).
> DropBox and Google seem to agree that there are no good
> solutions, since they are moving to Go.

Yup!

> > Nevertheless, it is interesting to discuss whether or not
> > any of these features will go mainstream or make it into
> > CPython.
>
> Indeed! I initially wanted to include the following in the
> article, but decided it would be too controversial. But now
> that I've been exposed as an ignorant and naive blogger, I
> might as well share these thoughts.

I love this guy! ;-)

> I have the feeling that a faster Python will never
> materialise unless the CPython core developers make
> performance a high priority. I understand that high
> performance was never a goal in CPython development (and
> Python language design!), but recent events (DropBox,
> Google) might help to reconsider that standpoint.

The fact that both Google *AND* DropBox are ignoring Python,
must be devastating to GvR, however, for us at least, this
emotional devastation may help to explain why Python is
evolving in such a strange direction.

> Here's a wild idea: consider Python 3 feature-complete.
> Similar to how Python 3 cleaned up the unicode and other
> warts of Python 2, Python 4 could clean up the performance
> warts, but retaining the "soul" of the language. But that
> last part is a diffucult one, because it would lead to
> endless discussions of what would still be Python. So it's
> better to define an official "TurboPython" subset. This
> would also ensure backwards compatibility, but of course
> complicate the implementation.

I've been hinting at that for years, to no avail.

> But who am I (or anyone) to suggest what the CPython core
> developers should do?

Do you write Python code? If so, then you have a right to
both speak and to be heard.