Types, Cython, program readability

[Tom Stambaugh]

> I'm not entirely sure why you think Pyrex should "contain a compiler".
> It certainly works well enough with the free [beer] MS VS 2008 Express
> and I'm fairly sure it's fine with MingW. Both of those are readily
> available and I don't imagine anyone who's going to use Pyrex / Cython /
> ShedSkin is going to baulk at downloading a compiler set :)

Anything like this is a lot more attractive to me if I can download and 
install a binary without *needing* a compiler. Most of the time, I just want 
something to run -- I don't want to risk diving in compiler-hell if I can 
avoid it. It isn't downloading the compiler set that worries me, it's that I 
almost never even want to think about it.

For example, the new (!) simplejson (v1.7.4) doesn't compile correctly (on 
my WinXP system, at least) with either any current MS or MinGW compiler. Oh, 
I know I can make it work if I spend enough time on it -- but the binary egg 
I eventually found seems to work just fine.