Section 1.7. What s Python Not Good For?

1.7. What's Python Not Good For?

To be fair again, some tasks are outside of Python's scope. Like all dynamic interpreted languages, Python, as currently implemented, isn't generally as fast or efficient as static, compiled languages such as C (see the earlier sidebar, "How Python Runs Your Code," for the technical story). At least when nontypical benchmarks are compared line for line, Python code runs more slowly than C code.

Whether you will ever care about this difference in execution speed depends upon the sorts of applications you will write. In many domains, the difference doesn't matter at all; for programs that spend most of their time interacting with users or transferring data over networks, Python is usually more than adequate to meet the performance needs of the entire application by itself.

Moreover, most realistic Python programs tend to run very near the speed of the C language anyhow. Because system interactions such as accessing files or creating GUIs are implemented by linked-in C language code in the standard implementation, typical Python programs are often nearly as fast as equivalent C language programs. In fact, because Python programs use highly optimized data structures and libraries, they are sometimes quicker than C programs that must implement such tools manually.

In some domains, however, efficiency is still a main priority. Programs that spend most of their time in intense number crunching, for example, will usually be slower in Python than in fully compiled languages. Because it is interpreted today, Python alone usually isn't the best tool for the delivery of such performance- critical components. Instead, computationally intensive operations can be implemented as compiled extensions to Python and coded in a low-level language such as C. Python can't be used as the sole implementation language for such components, but it works well as a frontend scripting interface to them.

For example, numerical programming and image processing support has been added to Python by combining optimized extensions with a Python language interface. In such a system, once the optimized extensions have been developed, most of the programming occurs at the simpler level of Python scripting. The net result is a numerical programming tool that's both efficient and easy to use. The NumPy extension (and its NumArray and ScientificPython relatives), for instance, adds vector processing to Python, turning it into what has been called an open source equivalent to Matlab.

Python can also still serve as a prototyping tool in such domains. Systems may be implemented in Python first and later moved whole or piecemeal into a language such as C for delivery. C and Python have distinct strengths and roles; a hybrid approach using C for compute-intensive modules and Python for prototyping and frontend interfaces can leverage the benefits of both.

In some sense, Python solves the efficiency/flexibility trade-off by not solving it at all. It provides a language optimized for ease of use, along with tools needed to integrate with other languages. By combining components written in Python with compiled languages such as C and C++, developers may select an appropriate mix of usability and performance for each particular application.

On a more fundamental level, while it's unlikely that it will ever be as fast as C, Python's speed of development is at least as important as C's speed of execution in most modern software projects.