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Van Rossum: Python Not Too Slow
snydeq writes "Python creator Guido van Rossum discusses the prospects and criticisms of Python, noting that critics of Python performance should supplement with C/C++ rather than re-engineering Python apps into a faster language. 'At some point, you end up with one little piece of your system, as a whole, where you end up spending all your time. If you write that just as a sort of simple-minded Python loop, at some point you will see that that is the bottleneck in your system. It is usually much more effective to take that one piece and replace that one function or module with a little bit of code you wrote in C or C++ rather than rewriting your entire system in a faster language, because for most of what you're doing, the speed of the language is irrelevant.'"
Like what, calculator? Or Spreadsheet? Or gmail.com? Now i see why Google does not have any C/C++ developers
And just as a comment, if you are smart enough to pinpoint this critical little piece of code, which you could write in C/C++......then your skills would be pretty much enough to write the same program on C/C++, and i dare to say, even with less skill set. So, what was the point again of learning Python!!!
As someone who's worked with Python for years both in personal projects and professionally, I've never had an issue with that. Maybe python attracts more intelligent programmers than the dime-a-dozen .Net / Java programmers being pumped out of university.