Re: [pygame] pygame performance limits

[Bill Coderre <bcbc@xxxxxxx>]

On Nov 24, 2011, at 3:55 PM, Julian Marchant wrote:
>> Now, of course, when you have a super-high-level language, like PyGame, and it's running in an interpreted language like Python, you will run out of power much sooner than you would in a language like C, especially on a "phone" computer.
>> 
>> This, however, is no reason to stop using PyGame -- it's a reason to improve PyGame. Improvements require a lot of technical knowledge, skill, and effort, but they benefit MANY.
> 
> Pygame is a library, not a language. ;) And much of it is written in C.
> 
> I very much agree with everything you said, though. What's particularly interesting is, as Psyco and PyPy have shown, higher-level languages can be almost as fast as or sometimes even faster than lower-level languages.

Oh, agreed. I have some pals that work on Haskell and whenever they beat C++ in a benchmark, they go drinking. Which is pretty darn often, actually.

It's really about the work that is done on the compiler/interpreter/libraries.

Of course, the MOST important thing is to choose a fast computer. The SECOND most important thing is to choose a fast algorithm. And the THIRD most important thing is to write clean, straightforward code, so that the compiler/interpreter can auto-optimize it for whichever hardware it's running on.

Once you've done that, THEN you can decide if further performance improvements are necessary, and use diagnostic tools to find out where all your speed went.