Why is debugging in eclipse/pydev so slow for my python program?

Question

I have a relatively simple (no classes) python 2.7 program. The first thing the program does is read an sqlite dbase into a dictionary. The database is large, but not huge,

Answer 1

Here is a good enough workaround, based on Mikko Ohtamaa's hint. I just verified the following on my Mac Air:

• If I simply close the 'Variables' window in the Eclipse GUI, I can single step through the code at normal speed. Which is great, but, uh, I don't have the Variables window.
• For any variable I want to see, I can hover my cursor over the variable and see the value. I didn't attempt to hover over my large dictionary that is the culprit here.
• I can also right-click on any variable and add a 'Watch', which brings up an 'Expressions' window. In this case the variable is just a degenerate case (very simple case) of an 'expression.

So, the workaround for me is to close the Eclipse Variable window, and use the Expressions window to selectively view variables. A pain, but for the debugging I'm doing it is better than pdb.