This is well-written. I could follow along quite nicely, from the setup through the bottlenecks and onto the resolution of the performance bug. Even the PRs are very pleasant to read: the majority of them is just a handful of changed lines with an added tests and a bit of documentation.
I was taken aback for a moment that this work originated from a report on StackOverflow. I had thought SO was effectively dead and abandoned by its community. But maybe I shouldn't project my own experience onto everyone else.
All of software is a hack in some way or another. You think of tradeoffs and make a decision. Theoretical purity is mostly an academic thing and Im sure you would love TCS.
This is well-written. I could follow along quite nicely, from the setup through the bottlenecks and onto the resolution of the performance bug. Even the PRs are very pleasant to read: the majority of them is just a handful of changed lines with an added tests and a bit of documentation.
I was taken aback for a moment that this work originated from a report on StackOverflow. I had thought SO was effectively dead and abandoned by its community. But maybe I shouldn't project my own experience onto everyone else.
Nice to see the performance improvements work.
Everything in Python is such a hack that requires shoring up ancient software forever.
But people love the thrill of things not working, as Djikstra already pointed out.
All of software is a hack in some way or another. You think of tradeoffs and make a decision. Theoretical purity is mostly an academic thing and Im sure you would love TCS.
Perhaps, however, this hacky language is more productive in the real world than most. What’s the point, otherwise?
The points:
- As the GP stated, the thrill of hidden bugs.
- Feeling productive due to fixing eternal issues.
- Getting paid to fix eternal issues.
- Feeling smart by talking about unnecessary issues.
- Writing a constant stream of PEPs to fix issues.
- Give conference talks about how you fixed issues.
- Give conference talks about how you will speed up Python by 5%.