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Why Python is Slow: Looking Under the Hood

posted by n1 on Tuesday May 13 2014, @01:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-dark-in-here dept.

Angry Jesus writes:

We all know that python is slower than compiled languages like C. But what can you do about it? Jake VanderPlas, director of research in the physical sciences for the university of Washington's eScience institute, digs into python's internals to explain how it works and what program design choices you can make to use python efficiently.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bill_mcgonigle on Tuesday May 13 2014, @05:46AM

    by bill_mcgonigle (1105) on Tuesday May 13 2014, @05:46AM (#42548)

    I have Pythonista friends who tell me that Python is a transformable dialect of LISP. I ask them why they don't transform it to LISP and run it through the well-proven LISP to C compilers (to juice their runtime performance).

    They don't answer then question and we eat pizza instead; wait about three months and they tell me that Python is a dialect of LISP.

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday May 13 2014, @08:11AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday May 13 2014, @08:11AM (#42585) Journal

    I have no idea whether your friends are right, but even if they are, actually writing a Python-to-Lisp translator would still be a lot of work. Probably more work than justified by the gain it would give them. Especially if their programs just don't need that runtime optimization. For example, speeding up code that spends most of its time waiting for I/O is generally useless.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

  • (Score: 1) by Wootery on Tuesday May 13 2014, @11:16AM

    by Wootery (2341) on Tuesday May 13 2014, @11:16AM (#42640)

    I have Pythonista friends who tell me that Python is a transformable dialect of LISP.

    I've never heard this claim (but I don't know many proper Python fans).

    There's a lot of good stuff in Python, but transformability? No. LISP-dialect? No, of course not.

    Next time they try it, point them at the failed Unladen Swallow project.