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Honestly I don't understand the pessimistic view here. I think every release since Microsoft started funding python has increased high single digit best case pe

by wrd83 3y ago

Honestly I don't understand the pessimistic view here. I think every release since Microsoft started funding python has increased high single digit best case performance. Rather than focussing on the raw number compare to python 3.5 or so. It's still getting significantly faster. If they keep doing this steady pace they are slowly saving the planet!

epcoa 3y ago
Sorry, but reality bites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- vanderZwan 3y ago
  It's not that simple. Amdahl's Law is about expected speedup/decrease in latency. That actually isn't strongly correlated to "saving the planet" afaik (where I interpret that as reducing direct energy usage, as well as embodied energy usage by reducing the need to upgrade hardware). If anything, increasing speed and/or decreasing latency of the whole system often involves adding some form of parallelism, which brings extra overhead and requires extra hardware. Note that prefetching/speculative execution kind of counts here as well, since that is essentially doing potentially wasted work in parallel. In the past boosting the clock rate the CPU was also a thing until thermodynamics said no. OTOH, letting your CPU go to sleep faster should save energy, so repeated single-digit perf improvements via wasting less instructions does matter. But then again, that could lead to Jevons Paradox (the situation where increasing the efficiency encourages more wasteful than the increase in efficiency saves - Wirth's Law but generalized and older, basically). So I'd say there's too many interconnected dynamics at play to really simply state "optimization good" or "optimization useless". I'm erring on the side of "faster Python probably good". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
oblio 3y ago
When did Microsoft start funding Python? Also, such a shame that it takes sooo long for crucial open source to be funded properly. Kudos to Microsoft for doing it, shame on everyone else for not pitching in sooner. FYI Python was launched 32 years ago, Python 2 was released 24 years ago and Python 3 was released 16 years ago.
- notatallshaw 3y ago
  To be clear Microsoft isn't directly funding Python, excluding any PyCon sponsorship. Microsoft hired Guido in late 2020 giving him freedom to choose what project he wanted. Guido decided to go back to core Python development and with approval of Microsoft created a "faster-cpython" project, at this point that project has hired several developers including some core CPython developers. This is all at the discretion of Microsoft, and is not some arms length funding arrangement. Meta has a somewhat similar situation, they hired Sam Gross (not the cartoonist) to work on a Python non-gil project, and contribute it directly to CPython if they accept it (which they have), and they have publicly committed to support it, which if I remember right was something like funding two engineering years of an experienced CPython internals developer.
systems 3y ago
I think the pessimism really comes from a dislike for Python While very very very popular, Python is i think is very disliked languages, it doesnt have or it is not built around the current programming language features that programmers like, its not functional or immutable by default, its not fast, the tooling is complex, it uses indentation for code blocks (this feature was cool in the 90s, but dreaded since at least 2010) so i guess if python become fasters, this will ensure its continued dominance, and all those hoping that one day it will be replace by a nicer , faster language are disappointed this pessimism is the aching voice of the developers who were hoping for a big python replacement
- dbrueck 3y ago
  To each his own, but the things you list are largely subjective/inaccurate, and there are many, many, many developers who use Python because they enjoy it and like it a lot.
  - systems 3y ago
    Python is a very widely used language, and like any popular thing, yes many many many like it , and many many many dislike it .. it is that big, python can be disliked by a million developer and still be a lot more liked than disliked but i also think that its true that python is not and have not been for a while considered as a modern or technically advanced language the hype currently is for typed or gradually typed languages, functional languages, immutable data , system languages, type safe language, language with advanced parallelism and concurrency support etc .. python is old , boring OOP, if you like it, than like millions of developers you are not picky about programming language, you use what works, what pays but for devs passionate about programming languages, python is a relic they hope vanish
    - klibertp 3y ago
      > but for devs passionate about programming languages, python is a relic they hope vanish Such devs are increasingly rare and, in some domains, almost nonexistent. For example, Kotlin borrowed a lot of nice features from Scala and Groovy, yet 99% of Kotlin code I've seen professionally never touched those features. Kotlin on Android seems to be overwhelmingly written by barely (or not at all) re-trained Java devs; moreover, those who never learned anything more recent than 1.8 (at least they know what lambdas are.) In short, it's not about the language; it's about the people who use that language. Wishing a language to vanish is misguided - it wouldn't change anything. The people would just switch to the next language and would still program in the same style. You can write Fortran in every language - this is as true today as it was back in the 70s, but the percentage of people who can't be bothered to stop writing Fortran (metaphorically, in more literal meaning their first language, whatever it was) even after changing to another language got much higher. IMO due to the changes in how programming as a trade is perceived in society... but that's perhaps a rant for another time :)
klyrs 3y ago
Julia is my source of pessimism. Julia is super fast once it's warmed up, but before it gets there, it's painfully slow. They seem to be making progress on this, but it's been gradual. I understand that Java had similar growing pains, but it's better now. Combined with the boondoggle of py3, I'm worried for the future of my beloved language as it enters another phase of transformation.
- leephillips 3y ago
  Would you say of the latest release (v1.10) that Julia is painfully slow until it gets “warmed up”? If so, what exactly does this mean?
  - klyrs 3y ago
    I'm not that up to date on the language, it's been a few years since I did anything nontrivial with it because the experience was so poor. And while that might not seem fair to Julia, it's my honest experience: my concern isn't a pissing match between Julia and the world, it's that bad JIT experience is a huge turnoff and I'm worried about Python's future as it goes down this road.
    - leephillips 3y ago
      There has been so much progress in Julia’s startup performance in the past “few years” that someone’s qualitative impressions from several major releases before the current one are of limited relevance.
      - klyrs 3y ago
        You're making this about Julia despite my repeated statements to the contrary. Please reread what I've written, you aren't responding to the actual point I've made twice now. A reminder: I'm talking specifically about my outlook on the future of Python, vis a vis my historical experience with how other JIT languages have developed. If you wanted to rebut this, you'd need to argue that Julia has always been awesome and that my experience with a slow warmup was atypical. But that would be a lie, right? And, subtext: when I wrote my first commebt in this thread, its highest sibling led with > I think the pessimism really comes from a dislike for Python So I weighed in as a Python lover who is pessimistic for reasons other than a bias against the language.
vegesm 3y ago
Because it only increases high single digit each release. If they keep up the 10% improvement for the next 10 release, we will reach a speedup of around 2.5 times. That's very small, considering how Python is like 10-20 times slower than JS (not even talking about C or Java like speeds).

by wrd83 3y ago

epcoa 3y ago

Sorry, but reality bites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
vanderZwan 3y ago
It's not that simple. Amdahl's Law is about expected speedup/decrease in latency. That actually isn't strongly correlated to "saving the planet" afaik (where I interpret that as reducing direct energy usage, as well as embodied energy usage by reducing the need to upgrade hardware). If anything, increasing speed and/or decreasing latency of the whole system often involves adding some form of parallelism, which brings extra overhead and requires extra hardware. Note that prefetching/speculative execution kind of counts here as well, since that is essentially doing potentially wasted work in parallel. In the past boosting the clock rate the CPU was also a thing until thermodynamics said no. OTOH, letting your CPU go to sleep faster should save energy, so repeated single-digit perf improvements via wasting less instructions does matter. But then again, that could lead to Jevons Paradox (the situation where increasing the efficiency encourages more wasteful than the increase in efficiency saves - Wirth's Law but generalized and older, basically). So I'd say there's too many interconnected dynamics at play to really simply state "optimization good" or "optimization useless". I'm erring on the side of "faster Python probably good". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

oblio 3y ago

When did Microsoft start funding Python? Also, such a shame that it takes sooo long for crucial open source to be funded properly. Kudos to Microsoft for doing it, shame on everyone else for not pitching in sooner. FYI Python was launched 32 years ago, Python 2 was released 24 years ago and Python 3 was released 16 years ago.

notatallshaw 3y ago
To be clear Microsoft isn't directly funding Python, excluding any PyCon sponsorship. Microsoft hired Guido in late 2020 giving him freedom to choose what project he wanted. Guido decided to go back to core Python development and with approval of Microsoft created a "faster-cpython" project, at this point that project has hired several developers including some core CPython developers. This is all at the discretion of Microsoft, and is not some arms length funding arrangement. Meta has a somewhat similar situation, they hired Sam Gross (not the cartoonist) to work on a Python non-gil project, and contribute it directly to CPython if they accept it (which they have), and they have publicly committed to support it, which if I remember right was something like funding two engineering years of an experienced CPython internals developer.

systems 3y ago

I think the pessimism really comes from a dislike for Python While very very very popular, Python is i think is very disliked languages, it doesnt have or it is not built around the current programming language features that programmers like, its not functional or immutable by default, its not fast, the tooling is complex, it uses indentation for code blocks (this feature was cool in the 90s, but dreaded since at least 2010) so i guess if python become fasters, this will ensure its continued dominance, and all those hoping that one day it will be replace by a nicer , faster language are disappointed this pessimism is the aching voice of the developers who were hoping for a big python replacement

dbrueck 3y ago
To each his own, but the things you list are largely subjective/inaccurate, and there are many, many, many developers who use Python because they enjoy it and like it a lot.
- systems 3y ago
  Python is a very widely used language, and like any popular thing, yes many many many like it , and many many many dislike it .. it is that big, python can be disliked by a million developer and still be a lot more liked than disliked but i also think that its true that python is not and have not been for a while considered as a modern or technically advanced language the hype currently is for typed or gradually typed languages, functional languages, immutable data , system languages, type safe language, language with advanced parallelism and concurrency support etc .. python is old , boring OOP, if you like it, than like millions of developers you are not picky about programming language, you use what works, what pays but for devs passionate about programming languages, python is a relic they hope vanish
  - klibertp 3y ago
    > but for devs passionate about programming languages, python is a relic they hope vanish Such devs are increasingly rare and, in some domains, almost nonexistent. For example, Kotlin borrowed a lot of nice features from Scala and Groovy, yet 99% of Kotlin code I've seen professionally never touched those features. Kotlin on Android seems to be overwhelmingly written by barely (or not at all) re-trained Java devs; moreover, those who never learned anything more recent than 1.8 (at least they know what lambdas are.) In short, it's not about the language; it's about the people who use that language. Wishing a language to vanish is misguided - it wouldn't change anything. The people would just switch to the next language and would still program in the same style. You can write Fortran in every language - this is as true today as it was back in the 70s, but the percentage of people who can't be bothered to stop writing Fortran (metaphorically, in more literal meaning their first language, whatever it was) even after changing to another language got much higher. IMO due to the changes in how programming as a trade is perceived in society... but that's perhaps a rant for another time :)

klyrs 3y ago

Julia is my source of pessimism. Julia is super fast once it's warmed up, but before it gets there, it's painfully slow. They seem to be making progress on this, but it's been gradual. I understand that Java had similar growing pains, but it's better now. Combined with the boondoggle of py3, I'm worried for the future of my beloved language as it enters another phase of transformation.

leephillips 3y ago
Would you say of the latest release (v1.10) that Julia is painfully slow until it gets “warmed up”? If so, what exactly does this mean?
- klyrs 3y ago
  I'm not that up to date on the language, it's been a few years since I did anything nontrivial with it because the experience was so poor. And while that might not seem fair to Julia, it's my honest experience: my concern isn't a pissing match between Julia and the world, it's that bad JIT experience is a huge turnoff and I'm worried about Python's future as it goes down this road.
  - leephillips 3y ago
    There has been so much progress in Julia’s startup performance in the past “few years” that someone’s qualitative impressions from several major releases before the current one are of limited relevance.
    - klyrs 3y ago
      You're making this about Julia despite my repeated statements to the contrary. Please reread what I've written, you aren't responding to the actual point I've made twice now. A reminder: I'm talking specifically about my outlook on the future of Python, vis a vis my historical experience with how other JIT languages have developed. If you wanted to rebut this, you'd need to argue that Julia has always been awesome and that my experience with a slow warmup was atypical. But that would be a lie, right? And, subtext: when I wrote my first commebt in this thread, its highest sibling led with > I think the pessimism really comes from a dislike for Python So I weighed in as a Python lover who is pessimistic for reasons other than a bias against the language.

vegesm 3y ago

Because it only increases high single digit each release. If they keep up the 10% improvement for the next 10 release, we will reach a speedup of around 2.5 times. That's very small, considering how Python is like 10-20 times slower than JS (not even talking about C or Java like speeds).