[Python-Dev] Reduce memory footprint of Python (original) (raw)

R. David Murray rdmurray at bitdance.com
Tue Oct 8 21:39:18 CEST 2013

On Tue, 08 Oct 2013 14:43:03 -0400, Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org> wrote:

2013/10/8 R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com>: > PS: I have always thought it sad that the ready availability of memory, > CPU speed, and disk space tends to result in lazy programs. I understand > there is an effort/value tradeoff, and I make those tradeoffs myself > all the time...but it still makes me sad. Then, again, in my early > programming days I spent a fair amount of time writing and using Forth, > and that probably colors my worldview. :)

In defense of my weak-kneed generation, one of major principles of programming as I understand it is to be as lazy as possible. (That is, have the machine do the work. :))

Yeah, that's a commonplace...but the obvious interpretation misses the point, really, which I'm guessing is why you included the smiley.

It is not so much a matter of being as lazy as possible, as of being as smart as practical[*] up front. Frontload all the work (and it can be a lot of work, which is why the aphorism is tongue-in-cheek) into the design and algorithms and tools, then be amazingly productive using them. That's really part of Python's fundamental design philosophy, I think.

In this context, if we'd been really smart-lazy in CPython development, we'd have kept the memory and startup-time and...well, we probably do pretty well on CPU actually...smaller, so that when smartphones came along Python would have been the first high level language used on them, because it fit. Then we'd all be able to be much lazier now :)

--David

[*] The opposite part of that zen[**] being "if you make the code as smart as possible, you won't be smart enough to debug it".

[**] Hmm. I wonder if our "zen" is really a dialectic?

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