On: Dismissing Python Garbage Collection at Instagram

[kirkdouglas]

Why should they rewrite everything if it works for them?

[sdfsdufihwfuhdf → kirkdouglas]

because it doesn't. What they're doing is borderline crazy. Similar to turning off the GC in the JVM... once you reach that point why not just use a more suitable language?

Java/Golang/Rust/C++/C# are all about 100X faster than Python. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to use one of those than mess with the runtome to squeeze out 20% more performance?

[kbd → sdfsdufihwfuhdf]

> Similar to turning off the GC in the JVM

It's absolutely not the same. The JVM uses GC for all object collection. Python uses reference counting and only relies on GC to clean up cycles.

[kirkdouglas → sdfsdufihwfuhdf]

It does. They're profitable even with fairly small engineering team considering size of their user base.

[smcdow → sdfsdufihwfuhdf]

> turning off the GC in the JVM

very common in the HFT world