When people talk about speed in the world of programming languages, they usually center the discussion around compiled vs interpreted languages. In this post, we will discuss two of the most famous languages on this planet, Python and C. I was recently playing around with this and I made a few pleasant discoveries. So I thought I should share them here. One of the biggest reasons as to why Python is slower than C is because of the dynamic typing feature in Python. While it may be true that dynamically typed programming languages are slower than statically typed languages, it may not be the major factor slowing down your Python code. The dynamic typing feature of programming languages like Python makes the interpreters harder to optimize. I guess this is the cost of having an extremely beginner-friendly language! But one thing to note is that there is a big difference between interpreter being harder to optimize and your code being slow. We’ve had years of research focusing on the best way to perform type checking at runtime in these languages, thus making this overhead negligible. So how do we understand why Python code is slower than C code? How do we write Python code that’s not slow? Continue reading “Why Is Python Slow?”
Tag: Hash
Using Hash Function In C++ For User-Defined Classes
If you are a programmer, you must have heard the term “hash function”. In its most general form, a hash function projects a value from a set with many members to a value from a set with a fixed number of members. We basically convert the input into a different form by applying a transformation function. Hash functions map data of arbitrary length to data of a fixed length. The values returned by a hash function are called hash values. An interesting thing to note is that hash functions are not reversible. This means that you cannot recover the original data from hashed values. This property makes it one of the most useful data structures known to mankind. Hash functions are used extensively in internet security. In this post, we will talk about C++ STL and how to use hash functions with user defined classes. Continue reading “Using Hash Function In C++ For User-Defined Classes”
The Linkedin Debacle
If you are following tech news, you might very well be aware of the fact that there was a security leak in Linkedin recently. A Russian hacker leaked around 6.5 million Linkedin passwords along with 1.5 million passwords from a dating website (possibly eHarmony) to get the total to around 8 million. If you haven’t changed your Linkedin password yet, it’s about time! Now how on earth could this have happened? What exactly went wrong? Continue reading “The Linkedin Debacle”
Perpetual Enigma 