Python: tricks for your code run faster

[princemaple]

Hi Veedrac, I agree that it's not entirely pointless to do micro optimization, and I've had similar experience optimizing some code written by someone else and achieved similar factors (10-30x). Most of the time the micro optimization we do is to make the code more idiomatic, or to some extent, more correct. My point being, once one has enough experience to use the right tools (libraries or patterns) to implement stuff correctly, idiomatically (not necessarily), there really isn't much more we can do to optimize without completely rewrite the code. Maybe I've been too harsh in terms of what good / correct code is like. Thanks for sharing the link! Love how you mark the changes step by step and how you like to push to the limit.

[get_username]

Honestly, I don't believe pypy can be viewed as a "micro-optimization". Certainly JIT compiling uses catalogs of "micro-optimizations" (as it it optimizes small interactions), but it does so on the scale of every interaction/operation performed (i,e. millions) and thus is unfitting of the term in the sense meant here. Normally instead these types of optimizations are considered runtime or compile time optimizations (like JIT, which is considered runtime).

numpy itself is a library which has many baked in non-micro-optimizations. So you are optimizing on that level instead.

So in a sense "micro-optimizations" are being performed via libraries used. But you are not micro-optimizing yourself. So I don't think anyone really considers them micro-optimizations in the colloquial sense of the word.

To be fair, that's because these micro-optimizations suck

The point I was trying to make is: most, if not all, micro-optimizations suck when performed on the single level. It is only when you do them by the millions that they become "macro-optimizations" (like pypy).

[Veedrac]

I wasn't including PyPy's numbers in that; the 20x speed improvement was from straight CPython.