> I don't get why people object to performance work on languages not intended for performance
My gut feeling is that Python is just not safe or static enough to ever be worth trying to compete with (say) C++ with. Python sure is easy but I think the asymptotic cost of using it for a big project (in my hands at least) is just not worth it.
I like Python's syntax quite a bit but I feel bad watching people learn to program using it - partly because it's an oddly low-level language (It's closer to being C than Haskell) and there's no compiler to stop you shooting yourself in the foot (If I write something fundamentally unsound I want to know about it now not when the process has been running all day)
As someone who learned on python (many years ago), I think the balance of being allowed to shoot myself in the foot, while only having to learn complexity when complex concepts came up, was a good combination rather than a bad one. Trying to learn C++ and Java before, having to type everything was an impedement. On python, you find out that types still matter when you try to add a string to an integer, for example. The moment the type matters to you is when you need to dig into those details. I'm not sure I would have the career I do if it hadn't been around to be the one language that fit my 16-year old brain.
You don't have to compete with C++. If switching the interpreter allows you to save 20% server costs at ~0 development cost that's a no-brainer. Rewriting your stuff in C++ might allow you to save 95% of your server costs, but development cost is a lot higher.
My gut feeling is that Python is just not safe or static enough to ever be worth trying to compete with (say) C++ with. Python sure is easy but I think the asymptotic cost of using it for a big project (in my hands at least) is just not worth it.
I like Python's syntax quite a bit but I feel bad watching people learn to program using it - partly because it's an oddly low-level language (It's closer to being C than Haskell) and there's no compiler to stop you shooting yourself in the foot (If I write something fundamentally unsound I want to know about it now not when the process has been running all day)