Frequently Asked Questions

Question:

Who uses Python?

Answer:

Goggle uses Python intensively. "Python has been an important part of Google since the beginning, and remains so as the system grows and evolves. Today dozens of Google engineers use Python, and we're looking for more people with skills in this language." so Peter Norvig, "Director of search quality" at Google, Inc. Lately, Google employs many well know people, who are involved in the development of the Python language itself or open source projects in Python. Since end of 2005, even the originator of Python, Guido van Rossum, is at Google. Other prominent users of Python are the NASA, Thawte (now part of VeriSign), Yahoo, and Red Hat. Python is considerably used by the scientific community.

Question:

An interpreted language is slow, isn't?

Answer:

For many application run time speed is somewhat secondary. Due to the power of modern hardware there is no perceived difference in speed for graphical user interfaces between Python and other, compiled programming languages. However, for numerical calculations, often referred to as number crunching, Python is comparably slow. But since Python is such a great glue language there are numerous tools that bring the speed of C or FORTRAN to Python, while preserving the ease of use Python provides. Numeric and f2py are two applications in this category.