What is the performance hit for using traitlets.Int() and traitlets.Unicode() under python 3.9?

CodePudding user response：

The performance hit for traitlets.Int() and traitlets.Unicode() was about 25 to 35 times slower than Python 3.9.14 stdlib.

This is the outcome of one performance-test run.

• Overall, I think the pure-python traitlets implementation adds a fairly high cost for what we get; however, there are obviously some situations that would benefit greatly from traitlets.
• Consider enthought traits.api if performance is required; the performance-critical components of enthought traits.api are compiled.

$ python -V
Python 3.9.14
$
$ uname -a
Darwin WS-T604GF3GK0.tld 21.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 21.6.0: Wed Aug 10 14:28:23 PDT 2022; root:xnu-8020.141.5~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 x86_64
$
$ python traitlets_test.py
After traitlets initialization, traitlets Unicode() was 24.0261 times slower than python stdlib
After traitlets initialization, traitlets Int() was 26.2789 times slower than python stdlib
$

If anyone wants to see what I used to test, this was the script...

# filename: traitlets_test.py

from timeit import timeit
import sys

from traitlets import HasTraits, Int, Unicode

###############################################
# Define traitlets tests here
###############################################

class MyTraitTester(HasTraits):
    """
    Initialize a HasTraits() class instance and define static
    types for foo_int and foo_unicode.
    """
    foo_int = Int()
    foo_unicode = Unicode()

def with_traits_int():
    harness.foo_int = 5
    return harness.foo_int

def with_traits_unicode():
    harness.foo_unicode = "5555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555"
    return harness.foo_unicode

###############################################
# Define python stdlib tests here...
###############################################

def without_traits_int():
    foo_int = 5
    return foo_int

def without_traits_unicode():
    foo_unicode = "5555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555"
    return foo_unicode

if __name__=="__main__":
    # Initialize traitlets here... `traitlets.HasTraits()` looks very slow... I will not test performance with it.
    harness = MyTraitTester()

    time_with_traits = timeit("with_traits_unicode()", setup="from __main__ import with_traits_unicode", number=1000000)
    time_without_traits = timeit("without_traits_unicode()", setup="from __main__ import without_traits_unicode", number=1000000)
    print("After traitlets initialization, traitlets Unicode() was {} times slower than python stdlib".format(round(time_with_traits/time_without_traits, 4)))

    time_with_traits = timeit("with_traits_int()", setup="from __main__ import with_traits_int", number=1000000)
    time_without_traits = timeit("without_traits_int()", setup="from __main__ import without_traits_int", number=1000000)
    print("After traitlets initialization, traitlets Int() was {} times slower than python stdlib".format(round(time_with_traits/time_without_traits, 4)))