How can some really large services (like Dropbox) afford to use Python as a primary language, if it’s one to two orders of magnitude slower than other, compiled languages?
9th December 2012
My answer to How can some really large services (like Dropbox) afford to use Python as a primary language, if it’s one to two orders of magnitude slower than other, compiled languages? on Quora
Because raw language speed often doesn’t matter that much. In the case if Dropbox the client software spends most of its time waiting for bits to load from the network or from disk. Most large websites spend their time waiting for the database. You can’t speed up network or disk performance by using a faster language.
More recent articles
- LLM 0.22, the annotated release notes - 17th February 2025
- Run LLMs on macOS using llm-mlx and Apple's MLX framework - 15th February 2025
- URL-addressable Pyodide Python environments - 13th February 2025