/var/log/mind - Latest Comments in Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Fabiano — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 19:41:21 -0000

Have you heard of PyPy? It is a python interpreter written in python, it is really worth taking a look, you may get surprised, it is much faster then CPython -- 6.2 times faster in average [1].

PyPy is all about speed and optimization, it achieves it mostly by JIT. In some cases it can be even faster then bare C! [2]

"We generally consider things that are slower on PyPy than CPython to be bugs
of PyPy." [3]

[1] http://speed.pypy.org/
[2] http://morepypy.blogspot.co...
[3] http://pypy.org/performance...

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Parag Shah — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:18:09 -0000

Very nice post.

I agree that the forced indentation in Python will lead to more readable code. I have seen some terribly formatted code in Java, and wished that indentation were forced there too.

However, when working on a team project some people will set their IDE's to use spaces instead of tabs, and some people might use tabs.

Will that be a problem? Are there any standards regarding indentation in Python?

--
Thanks
Parag

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Laurent — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 07:40:29 -0000

Interesting article. But was it a team project? I wish there were more people sharing their experience about an (average) team of java developers doing a project in those dynamically typed languages... IMHO it might be painful.

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Dhananjay Nene — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:39:09 -0000

JS,

I concur it is indeed a viable approach and that it is possible that I could
choose to exercise that optiion as well. I think it will indeed depend on
the nature of the application and its distribution model. I would think that
if the application hotspots are fairly localized and if it is intended to be
used in few installations, then using C/C++ indeed becomes a attractive
option.

Dhananjay

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

JS — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:34:40 -0000

Hello,

One neat thing about Python is that if you have performance bottlenecks, you can drop down into C/C++ code to rewrite just those parts of your system that have problems. How come you don't see this approach as viable as simply writing the whole application in Java instead of Python with some parts rewritten in C?

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Dhananjay Nene — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:37:08 -0000

Quite interesting indeed. A fair bit of similarities I must confess with code snippets as well.

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Brian Clapper — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:44:42 -0000

Funny... I wrote a similar blog article a couple months ago. See http://brizzled.clapper.org...

It's quite interesting to read others' experiences.

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

sindhu — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:48:06 -0000

Am learning Java at College currently, almost done with the intermediate stuff, I've been wanting to learn python since all the web APIs seem to prefer that. I really liked the article I could relate to it, It would be nicer though if you broke them up into paragraphs, kinda hard to read a long chunk of text, I lost track whenever I shifted focus.

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Dhananjay Nene — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:06:37 -0000

Yes, I was indeed using CPython.

While I have conducted benchmarks on at least 10 occasions, I haven't kept records of the same. However the one time I did maintain detailed records, I documented these here : http://blog.dhananjaynene.c... , it includes a benchmark on CPython, Jython and psyco as well. I will stand by my assertion that there is indeed a substantial difference in run time performance on most counts.

An example of tough refactoring is changing the method name in a scenario where the method is being used in a class hierarchy.

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Dhananjay Nene — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:51:38 -0000

David,

Nice tutorial and great references as well.

Thanks.
Dhananjay

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

apang — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:04:25 -0000

Exiting to the command line and executing code? How about running an inferior process in emacs and sending the current region? Any language without eval feels like a pain to use for me :)

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

Dan Fairs — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:49:45 -0000

Don't confuse Python-the-language with the Python runtime. I guess you were probably using CPython, which is the (de-facto standard) Python interpreter written in C. You'd probably also be interested in Jython, which will let you compile Python down to Java bytecode. 'Python' isn't necessarily slow; a particular implementation may be.

You don't give any specific examples of where you found CPython to be slow (for some definition of slow), but I'd be interested to see sample code, benchmarks, and perhaps a run on Jython as well.

I spend around 50% of my time in C# (whose tools have similar refactoring capabilities to IDEs such as Eclipse), and the rest in Python. While my development environment for Python (TextMate or emacs) certainly don't have refactoring tools like Visual Studio exposes (and I suspect whatever your chosen Java IDE is also does) I've found that I simply don't need them; a search and replace answers 80% of the common cases. Can you give an example of a refactoring operation that you do with your Java tools that you missed with the Python tools?

It's probably worth mentioning that Python does have high-quality IDEs (Wing springs to mind). These may offer refactoring tools.

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

David Goodger — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:41:42 -0000

Welcome to Python!

You may be interested in a tutorial I gave in 2007 at PyCon and OSCON, "Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python". Full notes here: http://python.net/~goodger/...

Re: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

prashant — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:30:48 -0000

Hi,

nice article.I am also learning ruby although i am a java developer just for fun.

Thanks
prashant
http://www.prashantjalasutr...