René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Axes instantiation is very slow","articleBody":"``` cmd\n\u003e python -V\nPython 2.7.11\n\u003e pip freeze | grep matplotlib\nmatplotlib==1.5.1\n\u003e python -m platform -s \"print platform()\"\nWindows-7-6.1.7601-SP2\n```\n\nI have discovered that my application spends a lot of time in Axes creation. Results of class instantiation profiling is below:\n\n``` cmd\n\u003e python -m timeit -s \"from matplotlib.figure import Figure; from matplotlib.axes import Axes; fig = Figure()\" \"Axes(fig, (0, 0, 1 ,1))\"\n10 loops, best of 3: 33.2 msec per loop\n```\n\n![axes-compressor](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/2743474/16426952/dd5ff57a-3d73-11e6-91c3-7483ec1b82be.png)\nInside `Axes.__init__` most of the execution time takes `self.cla()` call and about the half of it is\n[this loop below](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/blob/a8ad349c583b79ee24e749497381ab026ac5a360/lib/matplotlib/axes/_base.py#L952-L953)\n\n``` python\n        for name, spine in six.iteritems(self.spines):\n            spine.cla()\n```\n\nAfter commenting this two lines I have got this:\n\n``` cmd\n\u003e python -m timeit -s \"from matplotlib.figure import Figure; from matplotlib.axes import Axes; fig = Figure()\" \"Axes(fig, (0, 0, 1 ,1))\"\n100 loops, best of 3: 17.9 msec per loop\n```\n\nSo we have 33 ms per axes creation, and the half of this time it is used for spines creation that actually may be not used (in my case I have bunch of sharex axes and only one of them have spines).\nI see a possible solution where creation of spines, scales (you can see creation of logarithmic scale, which I do not use too) and other stuff is delayed to the point when it actually needed/initialized.\n\nAnd the fun part. For 20 created Axes we have 60115 calls to `Rectangle.stale` (3005 call per Axes instantiation)\n![image](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/2743474/16427532/6695645e-3d76-11e6-9106-2226cbac1338.png)\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/Kojoley","@type":"Person","name":"Kojoley"},"datePublished":"2016-06-28T18:31:21.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":34},"url":"https://github.com/6664/matplotlib/issues/6664"}