On Sun, 08 May 2011 01:44:13 -0400, Robert Brown wrote: > Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> writes: >> If you value runtime efficiency over development time, sure. There are >> plenty of languages which have made that decision: Pascal, C, Java, >> Lisp, Forth, and many more. > > I don't understand why you place Lisp and Forth in the same category as > Pascal, C, and Java. Lisp and Forth generally have highly interactive > development environments, while the other languages generally require an > edit, compile, run it again debugging cycle.
Good point. Perhaps I need to rethink where Lisp and Forth sit in the development vs runtime trade-off continuum. > Python requires me to rewrite the slow bits of my program in C > to get good performance. Python doesn't require you to re-write anything in C. If you want to make a different trade-off (faster runtime, slower development time) then you use a language that has made the appropriate trade-off. This applies whether you are talking about the entire program, or just one subroutine. > Why is that an efficient use of developer time? Because for any non-trivial program, it is faster and more developer friendly to just write one or three performance-critical routines in C, and the rest in Python, than it is to write everything in C. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list