Python and the need for speed

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Wed, 12 Apr 2017 10:28 am, Nathan Ernst wrote:

[...]
> If you have a performance problem with Python, before you blame Python,
> take a step back and look at your own code (or libraries you're using) and
> ask yourself: "Is my code optimal?"
> 
> Yes, Python is not the faster language/runtime in existence. But for
> probably 99% of the people out there that complain about Python's speed,
> there's probably plenty of suboptimal or outright wasteful code that they
> should fix first, before complaining. For the other 1%, Python was
> probably the wrong choice to begin with.

Thanks for your perspective Nate, that's a really good point and I wish more
people would remember that you can write slow code in any language.

There's a whole *universe* of use-cases, ranging from code where speed
doesn't matter one bit to absolutely performance critical code. No single
language can be ideal for all tasks, that's why we have so many languages
to choose from. Not just dozens, but hundreds! They all make different
tradeoffs between functionality, style, performance and memory use. That's
okay! Diversity in language design is a good thing.



-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.