Python and the need for speed

[Rick Johnson]

On Wednesday, April 12, 2017 at 4:34:00 AM UTC-5, Brecht Machiels wrote:
> On 2017-04-11 14:56:33 +0000, Steve D'Aprano said:
> > On Tue, 11 Apr 2017 07:56 pm, Brecht Machiels wrote:
> [...]
> However, we don't really know how Python's performance is
> affecting its popularity. It would be good to have some
> kind of information about user's motivations for choosing
> Python or moving away from it. Have any polls been
> organized in the past to try to find out?

Not to my knowledge. But a very good idea. Because when
Python fails to meet the demands of most users, those users
will not bother to complain, they will simply move quietly
to another langauge that _does_ meet their needs. So, it
would behoove us to anticipate the tends before they become
_the tend_.

Judging Python's popularity by gawking at Python's position
in an internet popularity list is like judging if you have
black paint on the bottom side of your shoe by walking
across white carpet and looking behind you for footprints --
by the time you realize you're leaving tracks, it's too
late!

> I realize that work on CPython (and thus the language
> itself) is done by unpaid volunteers. But I assume that
> they also want the language to thrive, and therefore want
> to cater to the wishes of the userbase at some level.

I would hope so, for, without the large userbase, what would
be the point?

> So perhaps the conclusion to this discussion is that we
> should first try to find out whether performance is an
> issue for a large part of the community (or possible
> newcomers).

+1