webserver performance (was Re: Why so few Python jobs? (and licenses))

[Alex Martelli]

"Paul Rubin" <phr-n2001d at nightsong.com> wrote in message
news:7xwv2418xk.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com...
    ...
> > Of course, in order to avoid this discussion entirely, you could use a
> > web platform written in Python (and therefore practically immune to
> > "malloc errors"), such as Zope, WebWare, or <PROMOTION TARGET="self"
> > STYLE="ruthless">twisted.web, available at
> > http://twistedmatrix.com</PROMOTION>! ;-)
>
> These programs are all way too slow for a high-traffic site on the
> hardware we used back then.  Even with today's hardware, it would be

Have you actually _measured_ the performance and scalability of a web
server architecture based on asyncore/asynchat, versus more traditional
architectures based on multiple processes and/or multiple threads?  I
haven't done it systematically at all, but the few informal attempts
I did do have consistently amazed me.  Event-driven programming seems
to have extremely interesting characteristics in this sense.


Alex