Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Fast Python, Slow Python by Alex Gaynor
Search
PyCon 2014
April 12, 2014
Programming
5
2.6k
Fast Python, Slow Python by Alex Gaynor
PyCon 2014
April 12, 2014
Tweet
Share
More Decks by PyCon 2014
See All by PyCon 2014
Postgres Performance for Humans by Craig Kerstiens
pycon2014
29
3.7k
Technical Onboarding, Training, and Mentoring by Kate Heddleston and Nicole Zuckerman
pycon2014
1
2.3k
"My big gay adventure. Making, releasing and selling an indie game made in python." by Luke Miller
pycon2014
2
1.6k
Farewell and Welcome Home, Python in Two Genders by Naomi_Ceder
pycon2014
1
750
Deliver Your Software in an Envelope by Augie Fackler and Nathaniel Manista
pycon2014
1
560
Hitchhikers Guide to Free and Open Source Participation by Elena Williams
pycon2014
6
1.2k
Localization Revisted (aka. Translations Evolved) by Ruchi Varshney
pycon2014
0
710
Smart Dumpster by Bradley E. Angell
pycon2014
0
540
Software Engineering for Hackers: Bridging the Two Solitudes by Tavish Armstrong
pycon2014
0
750
Other Decks in Programming
See All in Programming
旅行プランAIエージェント開発の裏側
ippo012
2
930
テストコードはもう書かない:JetBrains AI Assistantに委ねる非同期処理のテスト自動設計・生成
makun
0
520
Flutter with Dart MCP: All You Need - 박제창 2025 I/O Extended Busan
itsmedreamwalker
0
150
知っているようで知らない"rails new"の世界 / The World of "rails new" You Think You Know but Don't
luccafort
PRO
1
190
print("Hello, World")
eddie
2
530
ぬるぬる動かせ! Riveでアニメーション実装🐾
kno3a87
1
230
Tool Catalog Agent for Bedrock AgentCore Gateway
licux
7
2.5k
機能追加とリーダー業務の類似性
rinchoku
2
1.3k
プロポーザル駆動学習 / Proposal-Driven Learning
mackey0225
2
1.3k
Navigation 2 を 3 に移行する(予定)ためにやったこと
yokomii
0
340
The Past, Present, and Future of Enterprise Java
ivargrimstad
0
410
AIコーディングAgentとの向き合い方
eycjur
0
280
Featured
See All Featured
Faster Mobile Websites
deanohume
309
31k
Practical Orchestrator
shlominoach
190
11k
Connecting the Dots Between Site Speed, User Experience & Your Business [WebExpo 2025]
tammyeverts
8
530
Building Adaptive Systems
keathley
43
2.7k
Navigating Team Friction
lara
189
15k
Measuring & Analyzing Core Web Vitals
bluesmoon
9
580
Designing for Performance
lara
610
69k
[RailsConf 2023 Opening Keynote] The Magic of Rails
eileencodes
30
9.7k
Fight the Zombie Pattern Library - RWD Summit 2016
marcelosomers
234
17k
Let's Do A Bunch of Simple Stuff to Make Websites Faster
chriscoyier
507
140k
Docker and Python
trallard
46
3.6k
RailsConf 2023
tenderlove
30
1.2k
Transcript
Fast Python, Slow Python Alex Gaynor
About me • Core developer of Django, PyPy, CPython, etc.
• Director of the Python Software Foundation • Work at Rackspace (Thanks!)
A talk about two things
What is performance?
Why do we care about performance?
Lies, damned lies, and benchmarks
Performance is specialization.
Systems performance
What is Python?
What Python Isn’t • Cython • C • Numba •
RPython
Excuses time
Dynamic typing
You can monkey patch anything
Slow vs Harder to optimize
PyPy
$ python! >>> print 2! 2! $ pypy! >>>> print
2! 2!
Let’s make a deal
How can we specialize our code?
Let’s talk about C
struct Point {! double x;! double y;! double z;! };!
class Point(objet):! def __init__(self, x, y, z):! self.x = x!
self.y = y! self.z = z!
point = {! "x": x,! "y": y,! "z": z,! }!
Dictionaries vs. Objects
std::unordered_map<std::string, double> point;! point["x"] = x;! point["y"] = y;! point["z"]
= z;!
Why don’t we care?
if [hex, bytes, bytes_le, fields, int].count(None) != 4:! raise TypeError('need
exactly one argument')!
if [hex, bytes, bytes_le, fields, int].count(None) != 4:! raise TypeError('need
exactly one argument')!
if (! (hex is None) + (bytes is None) +
(bytes_le is None) +! (fields is None) + (int is None)! ) != 4:! raise TypeError!
Python makes everything easier
Let’s talk about strings
char *data = malloc(1025);! while (true) {! size_t n =
read(fd, data, 1024);! data[n] = '\0';! char *start = data;! while (start < data + n) {! if (isspace(*start)) {! break;! }! start++;! }! printf("%s\n", start);! }!
while True:! data = os.read(fd, 1024)! print data.lstrip()!
Zero Buffer
from zero_buffer import Buffer! ! b = Buffer.allocate(8192)! with open(path,
"rb") as f:! b.read_from(f.fileno())! for part in b.view().split(b":"):! part.write_to(sys.stdout.fileno())! sys.stdout.write('\n')!
https://zero-buffer.readthedocs.org/ https://warehouse.python.org/project/zero_buffer/
A few more myths • Functions calls are really expensive
• Using only builtin data types will make your code fast • Don’t write Python in the style of Java or C
One Python
I hate heuristics
Let’s take a lesson…
Thank you! Questions? https://speakerdeck.com/alex/