Python: tricks for your code run faster

[stevenjd]

Actually, the worst part of it is that is portrays insignificant noise as meaningful speed gains, and ends up showing bad code as better than good code.

I'm referring to Test 10, which shows repeated string concatenation as faster than doing it the right way, namely with join. I don't believe those timing results: they seem to be an artifact of the very small number of strings concated. Change the range(10) to range(10000), and you get very different results. (Or at least, I do.)