Will Python be faster if I put commonly called code into separate methods or files?

I thought I once read on SO that Python will compile and run slightly more quickly if commonly called code is placed into methods or separate files. Does putting Python code in methods have an advantage over sep开发者_StackOverflow中文版arate files or vice versa? Could someone explain why this is? I'd assume it has to do with memory allocation and garbage collection or something.

It doesn't matter. Don't structure your program around code speed; structure it around coder speed. If you write something in Python and it's too slow, find the bottleneck with cProfile and speed it up. How do you speed it up? You try things and profile them. In general, function call overhead in critical loops is high. Byte compiling your code takes a very small amount of time and only needs to be done once.

No. Regardless of where you put your code, it has to be parsed once and compiled if necessary. Distinction between putting code in methods or different files might have an insignificant performance difference, but you shouldn't worry about it.

About the only language right now that you have to worry about structuring "right" is Javascript. Because it has to be downloaded from net to client's computer. That's why there are so many compressors and obfuscators for it. Stuff like this isn't done with Python because it's not needed.

Two things:

Code in separate modules is compiled into bytecode at first runtime and saved as a precompiled .pyc file, so it doesn't have to be recompiled at the next run as long as the source hasn't been modified since. This might result in a small performance advantage, but only at program startup.

Also, Python stores variables etc. a bit more efficiently if they are placed inside functions instead of at the top level of a file. But I don't think that's what you're referring to here, is it?