[Python-Dev] Python startup time (original) (raw)

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Sat Jul 22 04:13:48 EDT 2017

On 21 July 2017 at 23:53, David Mertz <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:

I would guess that Windows users don't tend to run lots of command line tools where startup time dominates, as *nix users do.

Well, in the sense that many Windows users don't use the command line at all, this is true. However, startup time is a definite problem for Windows users who do use the command line, because process creation cost is a lot higher than on Unix, so starting new commands is already costly, and therefore minimising additional overhead is crucial.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem - Windows users avoid excessive command line program invocation because startup time is high, so no-one optimises startup time because Windows users don't use short-lived command line programs. But I'm seeing a trend away from that - more and more Windows tools these days seem to be comfortable spawning subprocesses. I don't know what prompted that trend.

Paul

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list