3 ms·

The horrible startup time is probably part of it: $ time ipython3 -c 'pass' real 0m1.083s user 0m0.355s sys 0m0.093s

• Macha 2y ago
  Is this worse than the standard python interpreter? Python startup time is a big reason I've moved a bunch of my personal utilities to Rust.
  • o11c 2y ago
    CPython startup is pretty fast assuming you aren't importing heavy modules. Of course, any nontrivial program needs to do some imports. Some examples: 0.01s cpython - with site disabled 0.04s pypy - with site disabled 0.04s cpython - import site and/or built-in modules 0.08s pypy - import site and/or built-in modules 0.13s cpython - import requests 0.31s pypy - import requests 0.31s cpython - import IPython 0.72s pypy - import IPython 1.1s cpython - run ipython nop 2.1s pypy - run ipython nop (the last digit of all of these numbers often varies a little) Since Python's startup is reasonably fast, it's possible to use it for interactive tools even with heavy imports by spawning a daemon the first time, and just forwarding the requests over a socket. This is mildly annoying but not particularly difficult.