[Mailman-Developers] python is slow
Bernhard Kuemel
darsie at gmx.at
Tue Dec 16 17:44:14 EST 2003
Richard Barrett wrote:
> On 25 Nov 2003, at 20:06, Bernhard Kuemel wrote:
>> Maybe. However, I don't like python as on our old P60 server it burned
>> up so much CPU time (15 s/min).
>
> It would be interesting to see you present convincing evidence that
> Python runs slower than Perl which you seem happy to rely on.
Eric Steven Raymond says in "The Art of Unix Programming"
(http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/index.html) on
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch14s04.html :
"Python cannot compete with C or C++ on raw execution speed
(though using a mixed-language strategy on today's fast
processors probably makes that relatively unimportant). In fact
it's generally thought to be the least efficient and slowest of
the major scripting languages, a price it pays for runtime type
polymorphism. Beware of rejecting Python on these grounds,
however; most applications do not actually need better
performance than Python offers, and even those that appear to are
generally limited by external latencies such as network or disk
waits that entirely swamp the effects of Python's interpretive
overhead. Also, by way of compensation, Python is exceptionally
easy to combine with C, so performance-critical Python modules
can be readily translated into that language for substantial
speed gains."
Bernhard
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