Cython - was: Future of Pypy?

[Stefan Behnel]

Dave Farrance schrieb am 23.02.2015 um 15:13:
> Dave Cook wrote:
>> On 2015-02-22, Dave Farrance wrote:
>>
>>> It's still quicker to do a re-write in the more cumbersome C
>>
>> You should try Cython.
> 
> I did try Cython when I was trying to figure out what to do about the slow
> speed.  My initial attempt showed no speedup at all.  The documentation
> told me that I needed to change the data types to special C-like types, so
> it seemed to me that it would become half way between Python and C and
> would be as cumbersome to develop as C.  So at that point, I just rewrote
> it in C.

The main selling point of Cython is that, while it gives you the speed of C
if you write C-ish code (because it translates it to the obvious C code),
you don't have to write that C-ish code unless you decide to do so. Right
the next line, you can use a set comprehension or yield a value back from a
generator. So, it's not "half way between Python and C", it actually covers
both, almost entirely. (Oh, and also C++, if you feel like it.)

Stefan