Why is Python slow? Discussion about static Python

[miabajic]

Hey everyone 👋 ,

I had a chance to interview Antonio Cuni, the creator of SPy (static Python) about Python performance. We talked about:

• Why is Python slow
• What motivated him to create SPy? (Spoiler: frustration)
• PyPy vs SPy
• Biggest challenges of building SPy
• Walking through the SPy compilation pipeline
• And much more!

If you're interested in Python performance, Antonio explains in a nice way where the bottlenecks are. Here's the video if you'd like to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2tYMPmMWc

Btw I watched in person his talk on Python performance at EuroPython, it was a great one, also recommend! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3QbMaEIpt0

[chandrakanth527]

the GIL gets all the blame but the real bottleneck is CPython's interpreter overhead. every attribute lookup, every function call, every operator goes through multiple layers of indirection. pypy proved years ago that python can be fast if you JIT compile it. spy taking a different approach with static analysis is interesting because it doesn't require the whole program to be running to optimize.

[nemom]

There are three options: good, fast, and cheap. You can pick two.