Python Efficiency / Optimization

[htirwin]

I wrote a solution to Project Euler #5 in python.

def ProjectEulerFive (m = 20):

    a = m
    start = 2
    
    while (m % start) == 0:
        start += 1
    
    b = start
    while b < m:
        if ( a % b) != 0:
            a += m
            b = start
            continue
        else:
            b += 1    
    return a

import sys

if (len(sys.argv)) > 2:
    print "error: this function takes a max of 1 argument"
elif (len(sys.argv)) == 2:
    print ProjectEulerFive(int(sys.argv[1]))
else:                          
    print ProjectEulerFive();

And then I google it to see some other answers. Hadn't thought of using prime factorization trick. But Anyways, I came across this supposedly optimized solution on stackoverflow.

check_list = [11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20]

def find_solution(step):
    for num in xrange(step, 999999999, step):
        if all(num % n == 0 for n in check_list):
            return num
    return None

if __name__ == '__main__':
    solution = find_solution(20)
    if solution is None:
        print "No answer found"
    else:
        print "found an answer:", solution

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8024911/project-euler-5-in-python-how-can-i-optimize-my-solution

But I found that my solution runs about 4 times faster. So I'm wondering why my code is so much faster? My program even unnecessarily checks for divisibility by 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12.

[helios]

My guess: all(num % n == 0 for n in check_list) creates an object, which requires memory allocation. This by itself could seriously slow down an otherwise speedy algorithm.