Performance differences between Python and C

Question

Working on different projects I have the choice of selecting different programming languages, as long as the task is done.

I was wondering what the real difference is

Answer 1

If your text files that you are sorting and parsing are large, use C. If they aren't, it doesn't matter. You can write poor code in any language though. I have seen simple code in C for calculating areas of triangles run 10x slower than other C code, because of poor memory management, use of structures, pointers, etc.

Your I/O algorithm should be independent of your compute algorithm. If this is the case, then using C for the compute algorithm can be much faster.