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Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:39:10 +0100
From: Steve Simmons <square.steve@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: Performance of int/long in Python 3
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On 02/04/2013 15:03, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:58:11 +0100, Steve Simmons wrote:
>
>> It seems to me that jmf *might* be moving towards a vindicated position.
>>   There is some interest now in duplicating, understanding and
>> (hopefully!) extending his test results, which can only be a Good Thing
>> - whatever the outcome and wherever the facepalm might land.
> Some interest "now"? Oh please.
>
> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2012-September/629810.html
>
> Mark Lawrence even created a bug report to track this, also back in
> September.
>
> http://bugs.python.org/issue16061
>
> I'm sure you didn't intend to be insulting, but some of us *have* taken
> JMF seriously, at least at first. His repeated overblown claims of how
> Python is destroying Unicode, his lack of acknowledgement that other
> people have seen string handling *speed up* not slow down, and his
> refusal to assist in diagnosing this performance regression except to
> repeatedly quote the same artificial micro-benchmarks over and over again
> have lost him whatever credibility he started with.
>
> This feature is a *memory optimization*, not a speed optimization, and
> yet as a side-effect of saving memory, it also saves time. Real-world
> benchmarks of actual applications demonstrate this. One or two trivial
> slowdowns of artificial micro-benchmarks simply are not important, even
> if they are genuine. I believe they are genuine, but likely operating
> system and hardware dependent.
>
>
First off, no insult intended and I haven't been part of this list long 
enough to be fully immersed in the history of this so I'm sure there are 
events of which I am unaware.

However, it seems to me that, for whatever reason, JMF has reached the 
end of his capacity (time, capability, patience, ...) to extend his 
benchmarks into a more credible test set - i.e. one that demonstrates an 
acceptably 'real life' profile with a marked drop in performance.  As a 
community we have choices.  We can brand him a Troll - and some of his 
behaviour may mandate that - or we can put some additional energy into 
drawing this 'disagreement' to a more amicable and constructive conclusion.

My post was primarily aimed at recognising the work that people like 
Mark, Neil and others have done to move the problem forward and was 
intended to help shift the focus to a more productive approach. Again, 
my apologies if it was ill timed or ill-directed.

Steve Simmons