[Python-Dev] Re: Python-Dev digest, Vol 1 #3221 - 4 msgs

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

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On Monday, April 28, 2003, at 04:02 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>> Why is the Python development team introducing bugs into Python and
>> then expecting the user community to fix things that used to work?
>
> I resent your rhetoric, Glyph.  Had you read the rest of this thread,
> you would have seen that the performance regression only happens for
> sending data at maximum speed over the loopback device, and is
> negligeable when receiving e.g. data over a LAN.  You would also have
> seen that I have already suggested two different simple fixes.

I apologize.  I did not seriously mean this as an indictment of the 
entire Python development team or process.  I would have responded to 
this effect sooner, but I've been swamped with work.

>> I could understand not wanting to put a lot of effort into
>> correcting obscure or difficult-to-find performance problems that
>> only a few people care about, but the obvious thing to do in this
>> case is simply to change the default behavior.
>
> It can and will be fixed.  I just don't have the time to fix it
> myself.

I noticed your comment about the checkin.  Thanks to the dev team for 
fixing it so promptly.

>> I think this should be in the release notes for 2.3.  "Python is 10%
>> faster, unless you use sockets, in which case it is much, much slower.
>> Do the following in order to regain lost performance and retain the
>> same semantics:"
>
> That is total bullshit, Glyph, and you know it.

Please pardon the exaggeration.  I forget that sarcasm does not come 
across as well on e-mail as it does on IRC.  I appreciate that the 
performance drop wasn't really that serious.

On a more positive note, looking at performance numbers got us thinking 
about increasing performance in Twisted.  Anthony Baxter has been very 
helpful with profiling information, Itamar's already written some 
benchmarking tests, and I finished up a logging infrastructure that is 
more amenable to metrics gathering last night.  (It's also less 
completely awful than the one we had before and should hook up to the 
new logging.py gracefully.)

We already have an always-on multi-platform regression test suite for 
Twisted (not the snake farm):

	http://www.twistedmatrix.com/users/warner.twistd/

If we get this reporting some performance numbers as well, it would be 
pretty easy to turn it into a regression/performance test for Python by 
tweaking a few variables -- probably, just 'cvs update; make' in the 
Python directory instead of the Twisted one.  Is there interest in 
seeing these kinds of numbers generated regularly?  What kind of 
numbers would be interesting on the Python side?
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