Python is slow

[Lou Pecora]

In article <mailman.5967.1229898197.3487.python-list at python.org>,
 "James Mills" <prologic at shortcircuit.net.au> wrote:

> In case anyone is not aware, Python is
> also used for heavy scientific computational
> problems, games such as Civilisation and
> others, and I believe (correct me if I"m wrong)
> it's also used by NASA.
> 
> --JamesMills

Python has become very popular in scientific computation.  You'll find 
it in use lots of places (universities, national labs, defense labs).  I 
use it for solving partial differential equations for quantum chaos 
calculations and went to C for speed up where needed using ctypes which 
is very straightforward and plays nice with numpy array/matrix 
libraries.  I've been doing scientific programming for 30 years.  Python 
with C extensions and libraries is the best approach I've ever used.  
Calculation speed is not a problem and the code can be "tweaked" to 
increase it easily.  Programming speed is incredible.  I can get 
substantial object oriented code up and running much faster than 
anything I've ever used.

-- 
-- Lou Pecora