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Why Python keeps growing, explained

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Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#171

Post by dralley »

joenot443 wrote: post #74
dagw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically something that takes 1 second in C++ will take 10 seconds (if you write efficient python and lean heavily on fast libraries) to 10 minutes in python. But the rest of your point stands

Damn! Is the rule of thumb really a 10x performance hit between Python/C++? I don’t doubt you’re correct, I’m just thinking of all the unnecessary cycles I put my poor CPU through.

It can be anywhere from 2-3x for IO-heavy code to 2000x for tight vectorizable loops. But 20x-80x is pretty typical.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#172

Post by ubercore »

CipherThrowaway wrote: post #126
amelius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also programmers who are tired of chasing pointers and simply want to get stuff done. E.g. people who once wrote "robust" code in Rust but were "outcompeted" left and right by coworkers who churn out shiny new things at 10x the speed.

At some point, every engineer has heard this same argument but in favor of all kinds of dubious things such as emailing zip files of source code, not having tests, not having a build system, not doing IaC, not using the type system, etc. I'm sure Rust was the wrong tool for the job in your case but I find this type of get shit done argument unpersuasive in general. It overestimates the value of short-term delivery an…

Using Python vs Rust is in no way in the same league as not having tests.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#173

Post by blensor »

CE02 wrote: post #169

One thing I’d add to this conversation, though I’m certain it’s already been stated: As many have mentioned, there is a large subset of the user base that uses Python for applied purposes in unrelated fields that couldn’t care less about more granular aspects of optimization. I work as a research assistant for international finance faculty and I would say that compared to the average Hackernews reader, I’m technologi…

I hate to admit that I very often start the python repl to just do some simple calculations. I always have multiple terminals open so instead of opening a calculator I just use python in one of the terminals.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#174

Post by airtag »

CipherThrowaway wrote: post #126
amelius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also programmers who are tired of chasing pointers and simply want to get stuff done. E.g. people who once wrote "robust" code in Rust but were "outcompeted" left and right by coworkers who churn out shiny new things at 10x the speed.

At some point, every engineer has heard this same argument but in favor of all kinds of dubious things such as emailing zip files of source code, not having tests, not having a build system, not doing IaC, not using the type system, etc. I'm sure Rust was the wrong tool for the job in your case but I find this type of get shit done argument unpersuasive in general. It overestimates the value of short-term delivery an…

Totally depends on the business you're in.

If you're dealing in areas with short time limits then Python is great, because you can't sell a ticket for a ship that has sailed.

And I've seen "the right way" which, again, depending on the business may result in a well designed product that is not what's actually needed (because people are really bad at defining what they want)

What's brilliant with Python compared to other hacky solutions that it does support test, type hints, version control and other things. It just doesn't force you to work that way. But if you want to write stable, maintainable code, you can do it.

That means you can write your code without types and add them later. Or add tests later once your prototype was been accepted. Or whenever something goes wrong in production, fix it and then write a test against that.

Oh and I totally agree you should certainly try to "do things the right way", if the business allows it.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#176

Post by VBprogrammer »

dagw wrote: post #163
ofrzeta wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say if you do data-intenstive computation with Numpy you are not leaving much on the table due to Python.

I've rewritten real world performance critical numpy code in C and easily gotten 2-5x speedup on several occasions, without having to do anything overly clever on the C side (ie no SIMD or multiprocessing C code for example).

Did you rewrite the whole thing or just drop into C for the relevant module(s)? Because the ability to chuck some C into the performance critical sections of your code is another big plus for Python.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#177

Post by ElevenLathe »

blensor wrote: post #173
CE02 wrote: post #169

One thing I’d add to this conversation, though I’m certain it’s already been stated: As many have mentioned, there is a large subset of the user base that uses Python for applied purposes in unrelated fields that couldn’t care less about more granular aspects of optimization. I work as a research assistant for international finance faculty and I would say that compared to the average Hackernews reader, I’m technologi…

I hate to admit that I very often start the python repl to just do some simple calculations. I always have multiple terminals open so instead of opening a calculator I just use python in one of the terminals.

Agreed. Python's REPL has basically totally replaced my usage of Emacs calc as a desk calculator, mainly because it is always there and if I don't know the big-brain closed-form solution for something like compound interest, I can just write a loop and figure it out that way.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#178

Post by FlyingSnake »

temp2022account wrote: post #80
amelius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also programmers who are tired of chasing pointers and simply want to get stuff done. E.g. people who once wrote "robust" code in Rust but were "outcompeted" left and right by coworkers who churn out shiny new things at 10x the speed.

> coworkers who churn out shiny new things at 10x the speed Sounds like a classic web-dev perspective, my customers hate when we ship broken tools because it ruins their work, new feature velocity be dammned. We love our borrow checker because initially you run at 0.5x velocity but post-25kSLOC you get to run at 2x velocity, which continues to mystify managers worldwide.

This is not just a web-dev perspective.

People use Python in financial applications, Data Engineering and AI/ML pipelines, infrastructure software etc and the 10x speed can be real.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#179

Post by kaba0 »

sva_ wrote: post #97
joenot443 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn! Is the rule of thumb really a 10x performance hit between Python/C++? I don’t doubt you’re correct, I’m just thinking of all the unnecessary cycles I put my poor CPU through.

It really depends on what you're doing, but I don't think it is generally accurate. What slows Python down is generally the "everything is an object" attitude of the interpreter. I.e. you call a function, the interpreter has to first create an object of the thing you're calling. In C++, due to zero-cost abstractions, this usually just boils down to a CALL instruction preceded by a bunch of PUSH instructions in assemb…

> What slows Python down is generally the "everything is an object" attitude of the interpreter

Nah, it’s the interpreter itself. Due to it not having JIT compilation there is a very high ceiling it can not even in theory surpass (as opposed to things like pypy, or graal python).

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#180

Post by wodenokoto »

jherskovic wrote: post #123
milliams wrote: post #109

This was already posted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35000415 , I don't know why it didn't detect the duplicate. I'll repost my comment from there: This is a strange article. It's got the talking point about Python that we were hearing about 10 years ago - "tired of those pesky curly brackets in Java, try this new language you might not have heard of: Python!". Who reading the GitHub blog has not heard of…

The antigravity part is probably a reference to https://xkcd.com/353/

It _is_ a reference to https://xkcd.com/353/, quite literally, as importing the module opens that link.
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