[SciPy-dev] Numpy/Cython Google Summer of Code project idea

[Fernando Perez]

Hi John,

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 5:29 PM, John Ollinger <ollinger at wisc.edu> wrote:
> Fernando,
>
> When I wrap a C package I spend 95% of my time modifying the package to run
> as a library and 5% of the time hand-wrapping it for python.  I find that
> hand-wrapping makes me more aware of the interface than using swig, so I can
> recode portions of the library to make the overall package work better.  A
> quick look at the cyrex documentation makes me wonder if it is primarily
> written for those who haven't written much C-code..  Is this an accurate
> impression?  I don't want to spend time learning another set of syntax to do
> something I already know how to do.

Others have given you their perspective on this, but for me a huge
issue is reducing the bus factor of our code.  The python C API isn't
particularly easy to use, and code written to it (even assuming an
expert who does a perfect job of testing, documenting and describing
the code) will inevitably be hard to maintain and extend in the
future.  Cython is close enough to Python to be fairly easy to pick
up, and if anything, the Sage project has proved that such an
infrastructure (among other things) encourages contributions and eases
the maintainability problem.

Cheers

f