[Python-Dev] 2.4 news reaches interesting places (original) (raw)

Gregory P. Smith greg at electricrain.com
Mon Dec 13 21:41:38 CET 2004

On Wed, Dec 08, 2004 at 02🔞48PM -0800, Guido van Rossum wrote:

I was pleasantly surprised to find a pointer to this article in a news digest that the ACM emails me regularly (ACM TechNews).

http://gcn.com/vol1no1/daily-updates/28026-1.html One thing that bugs me: the article says 3 or 4 times that Python is slow, each time with a refutation ("but it's so flexible", "but it's fast enough") but still, they sure seem to harp on the point. This is a PR issue that Python needs to fight -- any ideas?

All high level dynamic languages need to fight this. Substitute python for perl, php, ruby, tcl and the statements in that article still apply. They'll all have slower execution times (on avg) their compiled or JITed bretheren.

I suggest reading that article in a different light: The point of view of the people who are likely to believe what they read in government computer news is that it just confirmed that python is a useful languange for getting the job done easily. Not that one shouldn't use it because "its slow."

-- All new Python 2.4, now with blue crystals!

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