Book Image

Python High Performance, Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Dr. Gabriele Lanaro
Book Image

Python High Performance, Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Dr. Gabriele Lanaro

Overview of this book

Python is a versatile language that has found applications in many industries. The clean syntax, rich standard library, and vast selection of third-party libraries make Python a wildly popular language. Python High Performance is a practical guide that shows how to leverage the power of both native and third-party Python libraries to build robust applications. The book explains how to use various profilers to find performance bottlenecks and apply the correct algorithm to fix them. The reader will learn how to effectively use NumPy and Cython to speed up numerical code. The book explains concepts of concurrent programming and how to implement robust and responsive applications using Reactive programming. Readers will learn how to write code for parallel architectures using Tensorflow and Theano, and use a cluster of computers for large-scale computations using technologies such as Dask and PySpark. By the end of the book, readers will have learned to achieve performance and scale from their Python applications.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Using PySpark

Nowadays, Apache Spark is one of the most popular projects for distributed computing. Developed in Scala, Spark was released in 2014, and integrates with HDFS and provides several advantages and improvements over the Hadoop MapReduce framework.

Contrary to Hadoop MapReduce, Spark is designed to process data interactively and supports APIs for the Java, Scala, and Python programming languages. Given its different architecture, especially by the fact that Spark keep results in memory, Spark is generally much faster than Hadoop MapReduce.

Setting up Spark and PySpark

Setting up PySpark from scratch requires the installation of the Java and Scala runtimes, the compilation of the project from source, and the configuration of Python and Jupyter notebook...