Using Python for processing of large datasets (convincing managment)

[Thomas Jensen]

Paul Rubin wrote:

[snip]

> You may be best off with a hybrid approach, writing the control
> structure of your program in Python but the inner computational loops
> in C, called through the Python-to-C API or through SWIG.  These have
> a bit more learning curve than programming in pure Python, but will
> let you get at the performance of C code when you need it.

I gotta look into this.
However I am uncertain as how to structure my program.
One of the tasks of the program will be to calculate the standard 
deviation of rows of daily values (which are the result of another 
calculation, etc). I was planning on using lists and tuples like this:
     [(date, value), (date, value), ...]
How well will this perform i wonder? Since lists and tuples are Python 
structures, won't they still be "slow" to traverse?

-- 
Best Regards
Thomas Jensen
(remove underscore in email address to mail me)