On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 05:21:22 -0500, Steve Holden wrote:
> Before you have any code is exactly the *wrong* time to be considering
> performance.
Well, not really.
Don't we already tell people "don't use repeated string concatenation,
because it is slow", even *before* we know whether it is a bottleneck in
their program or not?
The problem occurs when people make "fastest" the *only* consideration,
instead of just one out of many. For instance, {} and dict() are very
different. Consider this:
>>> from collections import defaultdict as dict
>>> D1 = dict()
>>> D2 = {}
They not only have different performance, but different semantics. If you
consider it desirable to shadow such built-ins or not is open to debate,
although consider this:
>>> try:
... set
... except NameError:
... from sets import Set as set
...
>>> x = set()
You can't do that with syntax.
--
Steven
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