[wokwokwok]

"competitive"

Right, so let me get this straight, the argument is:

You can implement an arbitrary system in python and it is 'fast enough' to be usable and 'better' in terms of 1) speed to develop, 2) lower complexity (ie. lower LoC, easier to maintain) and 3) the garbage collection doesn't matter?

I strongly disagree.

I've worked in python for a long time, and it's a great glue language... but, it's not suitable for implementing high performance systems. Flat out.

Not. Suitable.

If the system you're developing is a mild variant on 1) something that already exists and 2) is implemented in a lower level language, then yes, python is a reasonable glue language to link together native modules.

That's why many of the machine learning frameworks use python; because it's great at allowing you to express 'high level concepts' using low level primitives.

However.

It is not suitable for implementing low level primitives; because its too slow and single threaded.

So... you might argue that this redis implementation uses enough pre-existing code that someone else has written that it is reasonably performant, but... once you go beyond the 'trivial' implementation that uses someone else code, you'll find it's really not suitable for this kind of use-case.

I love python; but this is... it's just wishful thinking.

Just because you like python, does not make python suitable for every workload.

[gomoboo]

You say that Python is unsuitable here but isn’t that subjective?

60% of the speed of Redis with its core functionality could be more than suitable for some.

> It is not suitable for implementing low level primitives; because its too slow and single threaded.

Redis was single-threaded for much of its life. That didn’t stop it from excelling.

I’ll add that I also have worked in Python predominantly. One of the things that frustrates me about it are the packages that use lower-level language bases that need compilation during a ‘pip install’. Hunting down dependencies gets old pretty fast when you were expecting ‘just Python’. For those that are ok with that and the performance hit, Python can for sure be a suitable tool for use cases that would traditionally be tackled lower down the stack.

[wokwokwok]

Not really. Python is sufficiently order-of-magnitudes slow, that it is not possible to implement pure python low level primitives.

There are no pure python low level primitives; everything is either a) wrapper, or, b) slow as hell and uses memory like a hog.

Python that wraps another language is a perfectly good way to doing things; but those low level primitives are never written in python.

...and neither are the low level primitives used in this case (—-> https://github.com/redis/hiredis).

[gomoboo]

I think we’re on the same page here with thinking Python wrapping another language is an alright way to do things.

There might be room for going lower with Python via interpreters like PyPy. Memory usage will still be high but speed will improve and you get the benefit of Python’s ease of use. For some that’s what matters most.

Personally I’m looking for a language that marries Python’s ease of composition and simple package building with typing that speeds up development in an IDE. I haven’t found that language yet. I’d be interested to hear any suggestions you have if you’ve gone down that road.