Python versus Perl ?

[Caleb Hattingh]

Hi m

Speed is a contentious issue here.  Point is, if you really need raw  
speed, why stop only at Perl and Python?  There are plenty of statically  
compiled languages that will produce native binaries.

The relative difference in speed between Perl and Python, whatever it is,  
is completely washed out by the enormous jump using, say, C for example  
[please, everyone else, I am aware of all the mitigating circumstances  
regarding, e.g. parts of the standard library written in C, etc.  That is  
not my point.]

A Good Reason for thinking along these lines (Perl/Python) is more  
something like speed and reliability of development.  Another one is  
maintaintability.  I must confess that I know pretty much nothing about  
Perl, so I can't comment about that.  My opinion about Python is that it  
is very, very good for these things.

The problem domains in which I do most of my work (chemical process  
modelling and simulation) really do require speed.  That's why I mostly  
use Delphi (i.e. reasonably fast code) at work.   I believe I know when  
speed is and is not an issue, and (by far) most of the time, my experience  
is that it is *not*.  So I use Delphi for numerical code and python for  
everything else.

You really will have to convince people here that execution speed is a  
real issue for your programming task (in order to continue this  
discussion).  Otherwise the debate will go south real quick.

Keep well
Caleb


On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 12:17:05 -0600, m <m at m.com> wrote:

> Courageous wrote:
>>
>>> If Python is better than Perl, I'm curious how really significant
>>> those advantages are ?
>
> speedwise, i think perl is faster than python and python performed the  
> slowest as shown in http://www.flat222.org/mac/bench/