Expert Python Programming - Third Edition

Improving the performance in critical code sections

Let's be honest. Python is not chosen by developers because of its performance. It does not execute fast but allows you to develop fast. Still, no matter how performant we are as programmers, thanks to this language, we may sometimes find a problem that may not be solved efficiently using pure Python.

In most cases, solving performance problems is really mostly about choosing proper algorithms and data structures and not about limiting the constant factor of language overhead. And usually it is not a good approach to rely on extensions in order to shave off some CPU cycles if the code is already written poorly or does not use efficient algorithms. It is often possible that performance can ...