python speed

[Krystian]

Hi
are there any future perspectives for Python to be as fast as java? i
would like to use Python as a language for writing games.

best regards
krystian

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 00:41:58 +0100, Andreas Kostyrka <an*****@kostyrka.org> wrote:

[on research supposedly proving that Python is faster than C, Java and
Fortran and assembly]

Well, it's easy enough to "prove".

Take one aspect of Python: Automatic memory management via reference
counting.

Now, while it's certainly possible to implement exactly what Python does
in C++ (both are turing complete, ...), the normal and idiomatic way is
to have APIs that care about object ownership.
Your discussion is interesting but a bit misleading, because most function
calls in C++ don't involve ownership issues. Most parameters are passed by
value (for reasonably small things, copying on a warm stack is bloody fast!)
or by const reference, with the understanding that the callee doesn't steal
or borrow a reference to the object. Or, the whole thing is inlined.

Yes, it sometimes happens that you have to have weirder things happen to
your objects -- but only to a tiny fraction of them, not all of them as in
Python. I cannot see how that would make Python, in general, faster than
C++.
The normal idiomatic way
is relevant, as third-party libraries usually force one to develop this
way.

I never use third-party C++ libraries, but I can see how an overly complex,
obsolete and badly designed API (MFC, anone? Or CORBA monstrosities.) could
complicate this a lot. /This/ is an area where C++ and similar languages
lose to Python -- you have to be an expert to write reusable C++ APIs which
don't suck!

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu
\X/ snipabacken.dyndns.org> R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

[bearophileHUGS]

It seems that Java JDK 1.4 (-server) HotSpot compiler sometimes (in
this test, on this computer, etc.) can produce programs faster than C
and Fortran ones in n-body simulations and similar stuff:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp...nbody&lang=all
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp...lnorm&lang=all

So maybe PyPy can become quite fast too.

Bye,
bearophile

[James Tanis]

Quite honestly I've never heard of java being faster than.. well..
anything. Faster than Python? I really doubt it. Their are several
libraries for game programming specifically as well as opengl, sdl, as
well as several different audio systems/daemons.. I'd suggest browsing
through the categories in python.org's module search engine.

Disclaimer (:P): The majority of generalizations have some amount of
exceptions, the java crack above was just my opinion - it was not
really intended to offend any java addicts out there (the poor,
miss-guided souls).

On 11/29/05, Krystian <no****@this.home.com> wrote:

Hi
are there any future perspectives for Python to be as fast as java? i
would like to use Python as a language for writing games.

best regards
krystian
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

--
James Tanis
jt****@pycoder.org
http://pycoder.org

[Xavier Morel]

James Tanis wrote:

Quite honestly I've never heard of java being faster than.. well..
anything. Faster than Python? I really doubt it. Their are several
libraries for game programming specifically as well as opengl, sdl, as
well as several different audio systems/daemons.. I'd suggest browsing
through the categories in python.org's module search engine.

Disclaimer (:P): The majority of generalizations have some amount of
exceptions, the java crack above was just my opinion - it was not
really intended to offend any java addicts out there (the poor,
miss-guided souls).

While java is much slower than Python in developer-time (e.g. the time
it takes to generate a working app, and the number of lines involved),
(good) Java code running on the hotspot (JIT) VM is usually at least an
order of magnitude faster than the equivalent Python code, if not faster.

What's dog slow in Java is primarily the VM startup, and then the memory
bloating, but as far as execution speed goes, pure Java code is much
faster than pure Python much more often than the opposite (now that may
change with Pypy, but Pypy is not done yet)

Xavier