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Sorry about asking this, I don't mean to be mean or anything, please don't take offense on this - I'm honestly intrigued. I would like to understand from where

Sorry about asking this, I don't mean to be mean or anything, please don't take offense on this - I'm honestly intrigued. I would like to understand from where a question like this comes, I understand different people have different experiences and backgrounds, but being on this site I would assume this would be kinda obvious. Can you share anything about your experience that can help me understand it?

staticassertion 6y ago
I know many people who wouldn't necessarily understand that compiled programs tend to be faster, because it just hasn't come up, or because in their domain it's not really important or even clear. If you've been working primarily with Javascript, for example, or even worse, Typescript, the question of "is this thing compiled or interpreted" is "yes". Compilation becomes a piece of either build tooling, where the artifact isn't a concrete binary, or even an attribute of runtime. It really wouldn't be too hard to imagine a shop built on Javascript and Python, where compilation just doesn't factor into the system in a meaningful way.
- jdright 6y ago
  Thanks, I see what you mean. I think the TypeScript example makes a great point on the difference of perspectives.
- unrealhoang 6y ago
  > the question of "is this thing compiled or interpreted" is "yes" Isn’t that answer applied to every programming language?
Volundr 6y ago
FWIW as a developer whose worked in both interpreted and compiled languages (but not Python) it's obvious to me that the compiled version will be faster, but it's not obvious that it'd be meaningfully faster. I'd actually expect network latencies to dominate here in many cases. As another commenter mentioned I suspect what's being measured here is the Python startup time rather than performance once things are running. My guess would be a faster to start interpreter (like lua or v8) would rival ht performance, while a slower to start compiled language like the JVM would be as "slow" or slower than httpie.
- jdright 6y ago
  I agree with you, and if he had asked if it was meaningfully faster, it wouldn't have struck me as confusing as it did.
johnhenry 6y ago
While I would expect the answer to almost certainly be "yes", theory and practice do not always match up. The "compiled vs interpreted" qualification was meant to preempt responses along the lines of "Of course it's faster -- it's compiled!" I'm curious -- were the question simply "Is it faster?" how would you have responded?

staticassertion 6y ago

I know many people who wouldn't necessarily understand that compiled programs tend to be faster, because it just hasn't come up, or because in their domain it's not really important or even clear. If you've been working primarily with Javascript, for example, or even worse, Typescript, the question of "is this thing compiled or interpreted" is "yes". Compilation becomes a piece of either build tooling, where the artifact isn't a concrete binary, or even an attribute of runtime. It really wouldn't be too hard to imagine a shop built on Javascript and Python, where compilation just doesn't factor into the system in a meaningful way.

jdright 6y ago
Thanks, I see what you mean. I think the TypeScript example makes a great point on the difference of perspectives.
unrealhoang 6y ago
> the question of "is this thing compiled or interpreted" is "yes" Isn’t that answer applied to every programming language?

Volundr 6y ago

FWIW as a developer whose worked in both interpreted and compiled languages (but not Python) it's obvious to me that the compiled version will be faster, but it's not obvious that it'd be meaningfully faster. I'd actually expect network latencies to dominate here in many cases. As another commenter mentioned I suspect what's being measured here is the Python startup time rather than performance once things are running. My guess would be a faster to start interpreter (like lua or v8) would rival ht performance, while a slower to start compiled language like the JVM would be as "slow" or slower than httpie.

jdright 6y ago
I agree with you, and if he had asked if it was meaningfully faster, it wouldn't have struck me as confusing as it did.

johnhenry 6y ago

While I would expect the answer to almost certainly be "yes", theory and practice do not always match up. The "compiled vs interpreted" qualification was meant to preempt responses along the lines of "Of course it's faster -- it's compiled!" I'm curious -- were the question simply "Is it faster?" how would you have responded?