Python Performance: GIL and Optimized Libraries

🐍 "Python Is Slow" Is a Skill Issue 🐍 Everyone complains about Python being 𝕊~𝕃~𝕆~𝕎 and single-threaded. Yet Python dominates big data processing. The uncomfortable truth: When you write df.groupby().sum() in pandas, you're not running Python. You're running optimized C code that releases the GIL and executes across all your CPU cores in parallel! 🔻 NumPy? C + BLAS/LAPACK. 🔻 pandas? Cython + C++. 🔻 Polars? Pure Rust. 🔻 PySpark? JVM cluster. Python is the 𝒐𝙧𝒄𝙝𝒆𝙨𝒕𝙧𝒂𝙩𝒊𝙤𝒏 𝒍𝙖𝒚𝙚𝒓! The 𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 do the heavy lifting in languages without the GIL!  🗂️ The pattern everyone misses: 🔹 Python provides the API (clean, expressive) 🔹 C/Rust/JVM does the computation (fast, parallel) 🔹 The GIL forced this architecture 🔹 You can't be lazy with Python—use the right abstractions "Python is slow" means "I wrote for loops instead of using NumPy." Wrote a full breakdown of the GIL, why it exists (reference counting isn't thread-safe), how libraries bypass it, and why Python won despite having the worst parallelism story of any major language. 📚  Link: https://lnkd.in/gWRuqg74 ❔What's your take: is Python slow, or are we writing slow Python code?❔  #Python #GIL #BigData #DataScience #Performance #HotTake #NumPy #pandas #Programming

Python is like anything right tool right job. I think mindset is also key which can be sad to any code. It's easy to proto type something in python and be a bit sloppy and then not fix it.

I want to add that Jax is a great way to speed up your numpy computations!

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