Preface

The Python programming language has seen a huge surge in popularity in recent years, thanks to its intuitive, fun syntax, and its vast array of top-quality third-party libraries. Python has been the language of choice for many introductory and advanced university courses as well as for numerically intense fields, such as the sciences and engineering. Its primary applications also lies in machine learning, system scripting, and web applications.

The reference Python interpreter, CPython, is generally regarded as inefficient when compared to lower-level languages, such as C, C++, and Fortran. CPython’s poor performance lies in the fact that the program instructions are processed by an interpreter rather than being compiled to efficient machine code. While using an interpreter has several advantages, such as portability and the additional compilation step, it does introduce an extra layer of indirection between the program and the machine, which causes a less efficient execution.

Over the years, many strategies have been developed to overcome CPython's performance shortcomings. This book aims to fill this gap and will teach how to consistently achieve strong performance out of your Python programs.

This book will appeal to a broad audience as it covers both the optimization of numerical and scientific codes as well as strategies to improve the response times of web services and applications.

The book can be read cover-to-cover ; however, chapters are designed to be self-contained so that you can skip to a section of interest if you are already familiar with the previous topics.