Performance and Profiling

Python is not often thought of as a high-performance language, though it really should be. The simplicity of the language and the power of its standard library mean that the time from idea to result can be much shorter than in other languages with better runtime performance.

But we have to be honest. Python is not among the fastest-running programming languages in the world, and sometimes that's important. For instance, if you're writing a web server application, you need to be able to handle as many network requests as are being made, and with timeliness that satisfies the users making the requests.

Alternatively, if you're writing a scientific simulation or a deep learning inference engine, then the simulation or training time can completely dwarf the programmer time (which is your time) spent writing the code. In any situation, reducing the time spent running your application can decrease the cost, whether measured in dollars on your...