Why This Python Performance Trick Doesn’t Matter Anymore
Submitted 1 day ago by abhi9u@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://blog.codingconfessions.com/p/old-python-performance-trick
Submitted 1 day ago by abhi9u@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://blog.codingconfessions.com/p/old-python-performance-trick
JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
TLDR: 3.11 is twice as fast as 3.10 at doing global name lookups, so an old speedup hack of aliasing a global function locally isn’t needed.
For example, when calling len() in a loop, going l=len, and calling l() in the loop was faster in 3.10. In 3.11, moreso in 3.13, it’s almost a wash.
However, the author says this:
But when I look at the numbers, I would say 3.13 is pretty close to making it an unnecessary optimization in general. A little subjective on how you interpret the numbers.
Great info, but this was like trying to use a recipe and reading the author’s life story to get there.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Thanks for the summary!
Yeah, in Python each . is a dictionary lookup. The cost of having a dynamic language where the compiler can do pretty much no optimizations (and yes, Python does have a compiler).
In static languages these lookups can be collapsed to a single pointer address by the compiler.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
I’m surprised about the module lookup thing, since I assumed it was just syntax sugar to do
from … import …
. We do thefrom
syntax almost everywhere, but I’ve been replacing huge import blocks with a module import (e.g. constants) just to clean up the imports a bit and git conflicts.Looks like I’ll need to keep this in mind until we upgrade to 3.13.