[Numpy-discussion] numpy gsoc ideas (was: numpy gsoc topic idea: configurable algorithm precision and vector math library integration)

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 9:11 AM, David Cournapeau <cournape at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 9:11 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>> So this project would have the following goals, depending on how
>> practical this turns out to be: (1) produce a hacky proof-of-concept
>> system for doing the above, (2) turn the hacky proof-of-concept into
>> something actually viable for use in real life (possibly this would
>> require getting changes upstream into Cython, etc.), (3) use this
>> system to actually port some interesting numpy code into cython.
>
>
> Having to synchronise two projects may be hard for a GSoC, no ?

Yeah, if someone is interested in this it would be nice to get someone
from Cython involved too. But that's why the primary goal is to
produce a proof-of-concept -- even if all that comes out is that we
learn that this cannot be done in an acceptable manner, then that's
still a succesful (albeit disappointing) result.

> Otherwise, I am a bit worried about cython being used on the current C code
> as is, because core and python C API are so interwined (especially
> multiarray).

I don't understand this objection. The whole advantage of Cython is
that it makes it much, much easier to write code that involves
intertwining complex algorithms and heavy use of the Python C API :-).
There's tons of bug-prone spaghetti in numpy for doing boring things
like refcounting, exception passing, and argument parsing.

-n

-- 
Nathaniel J. Smith
Postdoctoral researcher - Informatics - University of Edinburgh
http://vorpus.org