Why are Python Programs often slower than the Equivalent Program Written in C or C++?

Question

Why does Python seem slower, on average, than C/C++? I learned Python as my first programming language, but I've only just started with C and already I feel I can see a clear difference.

Answer 1

Python is a higher level language than C, which means it abstracts the details of the computer from you - memory management, pointers, etc, and allows you to write programs in a way which is closer to how humans think.

It is true that C code usually runs 10 to 100 times faster than Python code if you measure only the execution time. However if you also include the development time Python often beats C. For many projects the development time is far more critical than the run time performance. Longer development time converts directly into extra costs, fewer features and slower time to market.

Internally the reason that Python code executes more slowly is because code is interpreted at runtime instead of being compiled to native code at compile time.

Other interpreted languages such as Java bytecode and .NET bytecode run faster than Python because the standard distributions include a JIT compiler that compiles bytecode to native code at runtime. The reason why CPython doesn't have a JIT compiler already is because the dynamic nature of Python makes it difficult to write one. There is work in progress to write a faster Python runtime so you should expect the performance gap to be reduced in the future, but it will probably be a while before the standard Python distribution includes a powerful JIT compiler.