[off topic] Perl v. Python: Python Sucks!

Results of my non-scientific research: "Python sucks". Or rather Python performance does suck big time. Or rather lack of performance.

Simple test.

$ cat a.py
print "Hello world!"
$ time python a.py
Hello world!

real    0m0.039s
user    0m0.032s
sys     0m0.008s
$

Compare to this:

$ cat a.pl
print "Hello World!\n";
$ time perl a.pl
Hello World!

real    0m0.008s
user    0m0.004s
sys     0m0.004s
$

or this:

$ cat a.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    printf("Hello World!\n");
    return 0;
}
$ make a && time ./a
gcc   a.c   -o a
Hello World!

real    0m0.003s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.000s
$

I mean, what Python does those 40ms? Compared to Perl's 4ms? Or C's ZILCHms?

Absolute values seem to be small enough to be disregarded. But the same cliche can be seen in bigger applications.

For example Gentoo's tool chain - emerge - many Gentoo users are familiar with. Its DARN slow. Even compared to Debian system - apt-get - which does so much more and often labeled by jealous RedHat folks "amateurish" - works magnitudes faster (and even on junk hardware).

Or SCons. SCons take 1.5 seconds to just start up and print help message. It's Perl's sibling cons/pcons in the time manages to compile several sources.