Help me choose a C++ compiler to work with Python

[rhmd]

Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote in message news:<yFBcb.119348$hE5.4103433 at news1.tin.it>...
> 
> Similar orders of magnitude for the built-in random number generator,
> which IS a Mersenne Twister in Python 2.3 -- at least on my old trusty
> Athlon box (no doubt today's CPU's would easily take 3 or 4 times less):
> 
> [alex at lancelot python2.3]$ python timeit.py \
> > -s "from random import random"  \
> > -s "times=[None]*1000" 
> > "for x in times: random()"
> 1000 loops, best of 3: 380 usec per loop
> 
> 380 microseconds for 1,000 calls to random.random(), and here, too,
> very linear scaling, suggests about 380 seconds for a billion calls,
> i.e., about 6 or 7 minutes, on this old machine.

Wow!  I didn't realize that 2.3 had upgraded to Mersenne Twister
(which has a period of more than 10**10000, vs. WichmannHill which has
a period of less than 10**10 and the Excel 2000 PNRG which (to my
shock and chagrin) had a period of about 10**7).  This is awesome.