How to make Python run as fast (or faster) than Julia

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 1:33 PM, Rick Johnson
<rantingrickjohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, February 23, 2018 at 10:41:45 AM UTC-6, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> [...]
>> There are dozens of languages that have made the design
>> choice to limit their default integers to 16- 32- or 64-bit
>> fixed size, and let the user worry about overflow. Bart,
>> why does it upset you so that Python made a different
>> choice?
>
> A default "integer-diversity-and-inclusivity-doctrine" is
> all fine and dandy by me, (Hey, even integers need safe spaces),

In Python 3.6+, integers have safe underscores instead.

> but i do wish we pythonistas had a method to turn off this
> (and other) cycle burning "features" -- you know -- in the
> 99.99999 percent of time that we don't need them.

Definitely. We should also provide a way for people to manually
allocate memory, for the times when that would be more efficient. And
to switch out the syntax to include braces. And all those other things
people like from other languages. Hey, here's an idea: maybe Python
shouldn't stop people from using other languages, if those other
languages are better suited to the job?

> And BTW... Am i the *ONLY* person here who feels that Python
> optimizations should be more than merely the tossing of dead
> weight overboard?

I dunno. We optimize this mailing list that way......

*ducking for cover*

ChrisA