Extending Python
Magnus Lie Hetland · Apress eBooks · 2008
Y ou can implement anything in Python, really; it’s a powerful language, but sometimes it can get a bit too slow. For example, if you’re writing a scientific simulation of some form of nuclear reaction, or you’re rendering the graphics for the next Star Wars movie (wait—there won’t be any more now, will there?), writing the high-performance code in Python will probably not be a good choice. Python is meant to be easy to work with and to help make the development fast. The flexibility needed for this comes with a hefty price in terms of efficiency. It’s certainly fast enough for most common programming tasks, but if you need real speed, languages such as C, C++, and Java can usually beat it by several orders of magnitude. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.