alt Hacker NewsPython is fast enough for a whole set of problems AND it is a pretty, easy to read and write language. I do think it can probably hit pause on adding more syntax but at least everything it adds is backwards compatible. You won’t be writing a 3D FPS game engine in Python but you definitely can do a whole lot of real time data processing, batch processing, scientific computing, web and native applications, etc. before you need to start considering a faster interpreter.
If your only metric for a language is speed then nothing really beats hand crafted assembly. All this memory safety at runtime is just overhead. If you also consider language ergonomics, Python suddenly is not a bad choice at all.
Replies
I guess I'm wondering what is the point of tail-call optimizations, or even async/await when it's all super slow and bounded by the runtime itself? There are basically no improvements whatsoever to the core cpython runtime. So really what is all this for? Some theoretical future version of Python that can actually use these features in an optimal way?
> You won’t be writing a 3D FPS game engine in Python
While Eve Online isn’t an FPS, it is an MMORPG written in stackless Python, and seems to be doing OK.
everything it adds is by default backwards compatible, because old programs didn't use it, because it wasn't there yet, and so won't break.
Python's problem is that the non-new stuff is not always backwards compatible. It happens way too often that A new python version comes out and half the python programs on my system just stop working.
> If your only metric for a language is speed then nothing really beats hand crafted assembly
Only if you know the micro-architecture of the processor you are running on at great depth and can schedule the instructions accordingly. Modern compilers and vms can do crazy stuff at this level.
> Python is fast enough for a whole set of problems AND it is a pretty, easy to read and write language.
It is definitely easy to read. But speed is debatable. It is slow enough for my workload to start wondering about moving to pypy.