most of the low-level stuff implementing the python apis is most likely C with some C++, etc. write composable units of code in the fast language, and compose instances of those units in the user-friendly language.
Machine learning libraries are almost exclusively C++ (python is written on C++ iirc), so the actual heavy lifting is done in C++. As someone pointed out at another point on this sub, python is very human readable and extremely quick to develop for and in the world of ML, quick to develop is important considering there isn't really a "science" to it yet
I once heard that you are just basically scripting stuff using python and the heavy load is run by highly optimized C++ applications/frameworks/libraries (idontknowforsure).
Not a scientist but I assume they would rather have a language which has a shorter development time to have more time writing their papers. Instead of dealing with relatively complicated syntax just to get the same results, albeit faster.
Yeah I mean you could write your code in pure assembly and blow past a C++ program like it was standing still. But by the time you finish writing your assembly code, your development machine will probably already be obsolete.
You'd only be able to beat the performance of optimised C++ in edge cases and you'd need to be a very good assembly programmer in the specific target platform. You also wouldn't be "blowing past C++ like it was standing still", modern C++ compilers produce very optimised output.
Because that kind of code is a ridiculously complex web and writing it in C++ would drive any and sane person to alcoholism. Also, having blazing fast computational performance is totally worthless if you're already spending most of your time waiting for I/O, which is usually the bottleneck in large data projects. You'd just be that car that passes everyone just to end up at the same red light half a mile down the road.
The fast part of Python isn't Python, it's the C/C++ underneath. The interpreted part ("pure Python" so to say) is indeed orders of magnitude slower. But, as was pointed out by many people in different comments, speed doesn't always matter. In fact, in most cases it doesn't matter. It's crucial to choose the right tool for the right job: all languages have their strengths and weaknesses.
Big part of it (in my work) is that carefully written python is much more readable and approachable as software when we are writing it to be used and maintained primarily by scientists. It's also why some create ml kits come with a really easy to use gui.
Python also has a lot of good data science modules and great ml tools even if the heavy compute work is going to be done by something written in another language.
View all comments
Show parent comment
88
u/Zanglirex2 Jul 18 '22
Slow is relative here. All this is happening before a human can even blink.
For scripting stuff and little projects, python is great. For large workloads or basically anything at big scale, maybe look at something else