"Knacktus" <knack...@googlemail.com> wrote
He doesn't have to write it, as it is very obvious, that no Python code on earth (even written by Guido himself ;-)) stands a chance compared to Fortran or C. Look at this:
There is one big proviso. The C or Fortran needs to be well written in the first place. It's quite possible to write code in Python that outperforms badly written C. And it is quite easy to write bad C! This is similar to the arguments in the 1960's/70's when languages like C first appeared. The assembler programmers all said you'd never replace assembler with C because assembler was an order of magnitude faster (and smaller because size mattered then!). But that was only true of well optimised assembler. Nowadays speed is hardly ever used as a reason for using assembler. Now the case between interpreted and compiled languages is slightly different, but as python compilers emerge the gap will continue to narrow. Will Python ever challenge C/assembler? Probably not in the low level domain but where we are talking about implementing complex algorithms it may well do. But its a long way off just now and if you need speed selectively rewriting in C is still the best bet. The skill is in selecting the bits to optimise. But a pure Python implementation will benefit from any improvements that are made going forward without significant rework. HTH, -- Alan Gauld Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.alan-g.me.uk/ _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
