Lua is faster than Fortran???

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

On 04 Jul 2010 04:15:57 GMT
Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> "Need" is a bit strong. There are plenty of applications where if your 
> code takes 0.1 millisecond to run instead of 0.001, you won't even 
> notice. Or applications that are limited by the speed of I/O rather than 
> the CPU.

Which is 99% of the real-world applications if you factor out the code
already written in C or other compiled languages.  That's the point of
Python after all.  You speed up programming rather than programs but
allow for refactoring into C when necessary.  And it's not call CPython
for nothing.  off-the-shelf benchmarks are fun but mostly useless for
choosing a language, priogram, OS or machine unless you know that it
checks the actual things that you need in the proportion that you need.

> But I'm nitpicking... this is a nice result, the Lua people should be 
> proud, and I certainly wouldn't say no to a faster Python :)

Ditto, ditto, ditto and ditto.

> It's not like this is a race, and speed is not the only thing which a 
> language is judged by. Otherwise you'd be programming in C, not Python, 
> right?

Or assembler.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.