Comment Re:Speed it up! (Score 1) 9
Where did I say I was expecting similar performance? But Python is slow even for an interpreted language especially given its usually compiled to bytecode first. I would expect similar performance to Java , not run at approx 1/100th the speed of compiled C!
1/100 the speed of compiled languages is typical for interpreted languages.
Non-ancient implementations of Java are fully compiled. Toy benchmarks and Java programs carefully written as if there were no automatic memory management (and don't call standard libraries) can run just as fast ac C code.
Java can't directly support features that depend on dynamic typing and similar flexible run-time behavior that interpreted languages. However, many Java developers sorely miss those features, so they heavily use the reflection APIs and various "beans" frameworks to work around the pre-compilable static typing. This can actually end up running *slower* than Python because many of those Java features are dog slow.
You can already get implementations of Python that do JIT compiling like Java. They often run in the ballpark of about 1/10 the speed of C.