stylistic question -- optional return value

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Fri Aug 30 00:57:50 EDT 2002


Frank Buss wrote:

> My experience with other languages: Don't do performance tuning until
> you
> have profiled your program and found the hot spots, because often I
> was
> suprised, where the hot spots were.

That's the First Rule of Optimization, and it's true in any language. 
But in particular in Python or any other interpreted language, if
squeezing a few microseconds here or there is _really_ going to make a
big difference to you, you're probably better off using another language
in the first place.  If processing time is of paramount concern, Python
probably isn't the right choice for the project.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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 A lambda calculus explorer in Python.



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