Has anyone ever had code in Python, that turned out not to perform fast enough?
I mean, you were forced to choose another language because of it?
We are investigating using Python for a couple of larger projects, and my feeling is that in most cases, Python is plenty fast enough for most scenarios (compared to say, Java) because it relies on optimized C routines.
I wanted to see if people had instances where they started out in Python, but ended up having to go with something else because of performance.
Thanks.
No, I've never had to rewrite.  In fact, I started using Python in Maya 8.5.  Before Maya 8, the only scripting language available was the built in MEL (Maya Expression Language).  Python is actually faster than the built in language that it wraps.
Python's ability to work with complex data types also made it faster because MEL can only store single dimensional arrays (and no pointers).  This would require multi-dimensional arrays be faked by either using multiple parallel arrays, or by using slow string concatenation.
Python Performance - have you ever had to rewrite in something else?