Straw poll on Python performance (was Re: Python is far from a top performer ...)

[Paul Rubin]

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
> This is my "straw poll" question:
> 
>   Do you spend a "significant" amount of time actually optimizing your 
>   Python applications?  (Significant is here defined as "more than five
>   percent of your time", which is for example two hours a week in a 
>   40-hour work week.)

Yes, absolutely.

> Algorithmic improvements that you would make regardless of implementation
> language do not qualify, and wasting time optimizing a script that you
> run once a year so it takes ten seconds instead of fifteen also does not
> qualify because you certainly didn't need to do it...

Sometimes I'll take the time to implement a fancy algorithm in Python
where in a faster language I could use brute force and still be fast
enough.  I'd count that as an optimization.