[GRLUG] python app speed

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Thu, 2009-07-16 at 16:09 -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 4:00 PM, Adam Tauno
> Williams<awilliam at whitemice.org> wrote:
> >>Garbage Collection.  In managed platforms like .NET and Java, it's
> >>very important to understand if you want to get any kind of > >
> >>performance out of a "large" application.
> >It matters in 'unmanaged' environments like Objective-C and Python >
> >as well (and in PHP, Perl, etc...).    Most of these use reference
> >counting to auto release old objects.   But reference counting can
> >fail in interesting ways,  even assuming there are no bugs in the
> >implementation.  Maybe these are 'quasi-managed' enviroments?
> >And unmanged C, etc... has GC problems as well - where the GC is the
> >programmer. :)
> It all comes down to being aware of what goes on under the hood. :)

Absolutely;  but when you choose a managed or quasi-managed language
you're buying the car!  You get what you got under the hood,  bugs and
all [as well as advantages].  And there are bugs,  especially in the
case of PHP.  I feel like I could give a "101 ways to crash PHP using
perfect valid language constructs" presentation - although I wouldn't
want to.