You should care. PHP7 cared about speed and it was a success. Python 3 cared pretty much everything else except for speed and now 10 years had passed it didn't go anywhere.
Isn't Python3's primary issue that it killed developer productivity?
Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
21–30 of 69 posts
Re: Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
#22not caring about performance destroys faith in projects. if the things we write can't be as performant as we like, we'll use a different language and your project will fade. pretty simple concept. surprised that people don't understand that. (mind you, python is about as performant as I like for the tasks I use it for, so ymmv with the above.)
I think part of the issue is that Python has been the king scripting language on the desktop. It's been quite successful, and so all these people go "you see, performance doesn't really matter, since Python is succeeding without it".
What they fail to realize is that JS, for instance, can reach about 50% of the speed of C code nowadays. If Python could be that fast, you could use it to write videogames and all other kinds of software that you can't realistically write in Python today. It could displace a lot of C++ code. The poor performance of Python is actually limiting its adoption.
Python has poor performance, and a very poor handling of multithreading, at a time when single-core performance is stagnating. I think it's inevitable that people will start migrating away from it eventually. I mean, if you could have something like Python, but 20x better performance, would you take it?
Re: Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
#23If your reasoning is productivity above everything, therefore the only solution you can think of is Python, I call BS. As a Googler, I could relate countless stories of systems that were cobbled together in Python and then scaled up with massive investment, then later rewritten in C++ or Go, and generally ran with 100x fewer resources. Hell, from what I can tell, almost all of YouTube was written in Python and has or…
In no ways am I saying Python is the only solution. Moreso that Python is A solution. Sure, other languages and things exist. After all, no silver bullet.
Also, you are saying that google hit a scale where it really WAS expensive to use python. Twitter had a similar issue with Ruby. That makes sense for a huge company like google, twitter, etc. But for most of us, our companies/projects will never get the scale that youtube has.
Re: Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
#24Honestly the "[dynamically typed scripting language] is much more productive than [statically typed compiled language]" arguments sound like bullshit.
There's just too many things to take into account:
- the developer's experience with a particular language
- the developer's experience with the problem domain / understanding of the task / etc.
- time spent writing the code but also time spent debugging it
- time spent debugging a few weeks later when it suddenly breaks in production (dynamic typing often fails there)
Really, the most productive language is the one you're most familiar with.
I still use Python and Ruby for various tasks (mostly for scripting, command-line apps, simple services). Their main advantages are their library ecosystems and portability* . But they aren't very good for serious app development. Even when you feel like your business logic is extremely simple, you WILL get that weird null (sorry, None) or completely unexpected exception in production.
* I mean, you can easily run a Python script on, say, an iBook G4 running OpenBSD/macppc, or an old ReadyNAS with Debian/SPARC, or your MIPS home router. I like obscure hardware :)
Re: Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I'm daft, but I don't quite understand what your getting at.
translated: We dont care if our software runs like crap for you because our time is more important than your user experience.
I think your misunderstanding the tone of the article. I mention how the bottleneck is usually not the language. It IS important to optimize, but its important to understand where the real issue is. I later explain that things have to be only "good enough". And I also explain how you CAN optimize python when it IS to slow for your users.
Re: Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
#26The relationship between the code and the programmer is more important & expensive than the relationship between the code and the computer.
Re: Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
#27PyPy is mentioned in the article but omitted from the "Lets review some of the main points" summary.
> If Python is your bottleneck (you’ve already optimized algorithms/etc.), then move the hot-spot to Cython/C
After "If Python is your bottleneck", I'd just add "then try PyPy because there's a decent chance everything will Just Work and Be Faster." Sometimes you run into portability bugs in your code, other people's code, and sometimes you run into compatibility problems. But most of the time it Just Works.
Re: Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
#28If your reasoning is productivity above everything, therefore the only solution you can think of is Python, I call BS. As a Googler, I could relate countless stories of systems that were cobbled together in Python and then scaled up with massive investment, then later rewritten in C++ or Go, and generally ran with 100x fewer resources. Hell, from what I can tell, almost all of YouTube was written in Python and has or…
> then later rewritten in C++ or Go, and generally ran with 100x fewer resources
This kind of story comes again all the time, but the most important detail is always missing: how much of that 100x can be attributed to the language, and how much can be attributed to now I know the domain better, I know where the pitfalls are, how to model the problem, and when I need to optimize ? Because arguably the second one can bring a lot.
Re: Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
#29Most of the comments here contrast python or a faster language. I can't count the number of times I've prototyped a complex algorithm in Python, then, satisfied that the idea was sound, translated it into a faster language for release.
Re: Python is Slow, and I Don't Care
#30If your reasoning is productivity above everything, therefore the only solution you can think of is Python, I call BS. As a Googler, I could relate countless stories of systems that were cobbled together in Python and then scaled up with massive investment, then later rewritten in C++ or Go, and generally ran with 100x fewer resources. Hell, from what I can tell, almost all of YouTube was written in Python and has or…
> almost all of YouTube was written in Python and has or is still being rewritten in C++, Java, and Go, saving XX millions of dollars per year of CPU time.
If you reach YouTube scale, maybe the CPU savings > developer time.
But I don't think you will reach that scale if you start with C++. Completion will outpace you in no time.