[Tutor] Python fast enough for ad server?

[Alan Gauld]

"OkaMthembo" <zebra05 at gmail.com> wrote 

> I need to write an ad-serving application and i'm 
> using Win XP as my dev platform. 

The real issue is what are you using for your deployment 
platform,. If its Win XP then Python is probably fast 
enough since XP cannot handle huge volumes anyway. 
If its enterprise scale Windows or some other OS then 
there are other questions to ask.

> i wonder if Python would have the performance or
> scale fast enough to a large user base. 

Define large. Its not normally the number of users 
that matters but thenumber of concurrent users.
Google has probably 10's of millions of users 
but less than a million at any one time. Are we 
talking google sizes?

> Python and Java, but Jython only supports Python 2.2 

Jython will not be significantly faster than Python.
And unless you have a good optimising/JIT compiler
neither will Java IMHO.

But Python 2.2 would be adequate to write a server 
anyhow so you just lose a few of the latest bells 
and whistles, no big loss. Given the choice between 
Python 2.2. and Java 5 I know which I'd prefer...

Alan G.