[Python-ideas] Python 3000 TIOBE -3%

[Mike Meyer]

On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:57:20 +0100
Sturla Molden <sturla at molden.no> wrote:
> On 09.02.2012 19:42, Mike Meyer wrote:
> > If threading is the only acceptable concurrency mechanism, then Python
> > is the wrong language to use. But you're also not building scaleable
> > systems, which is most of where it really matters. If you're willing
> > to consider things other than threading - and you have to if you want
> > to build scaleable systems - then Python makes a good choice.
> Yes or no... Python is used for parallel computing on the biggest 
> supercomputers, monsters like Cray and IBM blue genes with tens of 
> thousands of CPUs. But what really fails to scale is the Python module 
> loader! For example it can take hours to "import numpy" for 30,000 
> Python processes on a blue gene.

Whether or not hours of time to import is an issue depends on what
you're doing. I typically build systems running on hundreds of CPUs
for weeks on end, meaning you get years of CPU time per run. So if it
took a few hours of CPU time to get started, it wouldn't be much of a
problem. If it took a few hours of wall clock time - well, that would
be more of a problem, mostly because that long of an outage would be
unacceptable.

      <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/
Independent Software developer/SCM consultant, email for more information.

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