> Do you think I should consider making it a priority to code in a fairly low-level programming language (e.g. Rust)
Maybe. Premature optimization is said to be the root of all evil...
But at the same time - the assumption that everything will be easier and faster in Python rather than Rust or C++ is often invalid. Sure, for smaller scripts it almost always is like that, but once your app grows, this may stop being the case.
Start with a language that's convenient for you and with which you can release an initial version. Then get an understanding how it behaves in terms of performance, and draw your conclusions.
> as fast and efficient as possible.
Responsiveness is not the same as speed or efficiency. Of course it's important to be fast and efficient, but it is even more important to not just start crunching numbers and ignore the user and the rest of the system.
Do your hard lifting asynchronously and have a thread attending to user input and your UI (or even different threads for these two tasks). And this is easier said than done!
Also remember you'll have to try and work around delays and slowdowns due to other apps and the (non-realtime) OS. Specifically, you might have to play with thread scheduling and I/O priority (although - that's usually the user's rather than the app's job).
Additional notes:
* Also consider C++; it has some advantages and disadvantages relative to Rust (which I obviously will not get into), but it has seen a whole lot of progress in recent years, in particular w.r.t. the ease of doing many things which used to be painful.
* If you think of Rust as low-level, then your head must be in the clouds... :-P
> Maybe. Premature optimization is said to be the root of all evil...
The full quote, because it always gets butchered to "premature optimization is the root of all evil":
Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%.
I think this quote is pretty funny in hindsight. Since it was said, we've had an entire generation of OOP muppets, and now a second one of modern web developers going that way, that add layers of pointless abstraction and complete bullshit on top of everything they write, just for fun.
In the 70s you might've needed a reason like optimisation to commit evil. These days apathy and cargo culting do it perfectly fine without optimisation even coming into the picture.
Maybe. Premature optimization is said to be the root of all evil...
But at the same time - the assumption that everything will be easier and faster in Python rather than Rust or C++ is often invalid. Sure, for smaller scripts it almost always is like that, but once your app grows, this may stop being the case.
Start with a language that's convenient for you and with which you can release an initial version. Then get an understanding how it behaves in terms of performance, and draw your conclusions.
> as fast and efficient as possible.
Responsiveness is not the same as speed or efficiency. Of course it's important to be fast and efficient, but it is even more important to not just start crunching numbers and ignore the user and the rest of the system.
Do your hard lifting asynchronously and have a thread attending to user input and your UI (or even different threads for these two tasks). And this is easier said than done!
Also remember you'll have to try and work around delays and slowdowns due to other apps and the (non-realtime) OS. Specifically, you might have to play with thread scheduling and I/O priority (although - that's usually the user's rather than the app's job).
Additional notes:
* Also consider C++; it has some advantages and disadvantages relative to Rust (which I obviously will not get into), but it has seen a whole lot of progress in recent years, in particular w.r.t. the ease of doing many things which used to be painful.
* If you think of Rust as low-level, then your head must be in the clouds... :-P