python-performance-optimization
Profile and optimize Python code using cProfile, memory profilers, and performance best practices. Use when debugging slow Python code, optimizing bottlenecks, or improving application performance.
What this skill does
# Python Performance Optimization
Comprehensive guide to profiling, analyzing, and optimizing Python code for better performance, including CPU profiling, memory optimization, and implementation best practices.
## When to Use This Skill
- Identifying performance bottlenecks in Python applications
- Reducing application latency and response times
- Optimizing CPU-intensive operations
- Reducing memory consumption and memory leaks
- Improving database query performance
- Optimizing I/O operations
- Speeding up data processing pipelines
- Implementing high-performance algorithms
- Profiling production applications
## Core Concepts
### 1. Profiling Types
- **CPU Profiling**: Identify time-consuming functions
- **Memory Profiling**: Track memory allocation and leaks
- **Line Profiling**: Profile at line-by-line granularity
- **Call Graph**: Visualize function call relationships
### 2. Performance Metrics
- **Execution Time**: How long operations take
- **Memory Usage**: Peak and average memory consumption
- **CPU Utilization**: Processor usage patterns
- **I/O Wait**: Time spent on I/O operations
### 3. Optimization Strategies
- **Algorithmic**: Better algorithms and data structures
- **Implementation**: More efficient code patterns
- **Parallelization**: Multi-threading/processing
- **Caching**: Avoid redundant computation
- **Native Extensions**: C/Rust for critical paths
## Quick Start
### Basic Timing
```python
import time
def measure_time():
"""Simple timing measurement."""
start = time.time()
# Your code here
result = sum(range(1000000))
elapsed = time.time() - start
print(f"Execution time: {elapsed:.4f} seconds")
return result
# Better: use timeit for accurate measurements
import timeit
execution_time = timeit.timeit(
"sum(range(1000000))",
number=100
)
print(f"Average time: {execution_time/100:.6f} seconds")
```
## Detailed patterns and worked examples
Detailed pattern documentation lives in `references/details.md`. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.
## Best Practices
1. **Profile before optimizing** - Measure to find real bottlenecks
2. **Focus on hot paths** - Optimize code that runs most frequently
3. **Use appropriate data structures** - Dict for lookups, set for membership
4. **Avoid premature optimization** - Clarity first, then optimize
5. **Use built-in functions** - They're implemented in C
6. **Cache expensive computations** - Use lru_cache
7. **Batch I/O operations** - Reduce system calls
8. **Use generators** for large datasets
9. **Consider NumPy** for numerical operations
10. **Profile production code** - Use py-spy for live systems
## Common Pitfalls
- Optimizing without profiling
- Using global variables unnecessarily
- Not using appropriate data structures
- Creating unnecessary copies of data
- Not using connection pooling for databases
- Ignoring algorithmic complexity
- Over-optimizing rare code paths
- Not considering memory usage
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