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Disagreeing with you and agreeing with the parent, it sounds like a lost art... Numpy doesn't pack and unpack python data structures, it just uses C structures.

by snissn 9y ago

Disagreeing with you and agreeing with the parent, it sounds like a lost art... Numpy doesn't pack and unpack python data structures, it just uses C structures. Python extensions I've written just use C/C++ data types and only occasionally passes python native types back to python. Python is amazing for developer productivity, but the methods are a bit opaque.

jerf 9y ago
"Python extensions I've written just use C/C++ data types and only occasionally passes python native types back to python." See my other post; was your system basically using Python as an extension language on a system fundamentally implemented in C/C++? That's not the problem this discussion is about, which is when you have a large pile of Python code that is the main component of your system, and has proved to be slow. Piecemeal extensionization is not a very good option there, and non-piecemeal extensionization is "rewriting the system in a faster language". If it's a lost art, it's because the domain where this is the best option is steadily shrinking. There's an increasing number of languages that interop well with C (and sometimes C++), are more convenient, and are still fast. Many of them are fast enough and convenient enough to simply implement your code in that language in the first place. As a result of that, I personally think that dynamic scripting languages have reached their peak and are now facing inexorable slow decline; the problem they solved in the 1990s is increasingly not a problem as a crop of languages that are both convenient and fast continue marching forward. JavaScript is, as ever, an exception due to its currently-privileged place in the browser ecosystem, though over the next decade that's going to fade as WebAssembly hits maturity. (But let me emphasize that "slow"; I'm talking decades, not months. There is still plenty of opportunity to graduate this semester, get a job in dynamic scripting languages, and be in that space for 20 years. But I think in another 2-4 years we're all going to be able to agree they've peaked.)
- snissn 9y ago
  > was your system basically using Python as an extension language on a system fundamentally implemented in C/C++? python for the networking and business logic, C/C++ for the data

by snissn 9y ago

jerf 9y ago

"Python extensions I've written just use C/C++ data types and only occasionally passes python native types back to python." See my other post; was your system basically using Python as an extension language on a system fundamentally implemented in C/C++? That's not the problem this discussion is about, which is when you have a large pile of Python code that is the main component of your system, and has proved to be slow. Piecemeal extensionization is not a very good option there, and non-piecemeal extensionization is "rewriting the system in a faster language". If it's a lost art, it's because the domain where this is the best option is steadily shrinking. There's an increasing number of languages that interop well with C (and sometimes C++), are more convenient, and are still fast. Many of them are fast enough and convenient enough to simply implement your code in that language in the first place. As a result of that, I personally think that dynamic scripting languages have reached their peak and are now facing inexorable slow decline; the problem they solved in the 1990s is increasingly not a problem as a crop of languages that are both convenient and fast continue marching forward. JavaScript is, as ever, an exception due to its currently-privileged place in the browser ecosystem, though over the next decade that's going to fade as WebAssembly hits maturity. (But let me emphasize that "slow"; I'm talking decades, not months. There is still plenty of opportunity to graduate this semester, get a job in dynamic scripting languages, and be in that space for 20 years. But I think in another 2-4 years we're all going to be able to agree they've peaked.)

snissn 9y ago
> was your system basically using Python as an extension language on a system fundamentally implemented in C/C++? python for the networking and business logic, C/C++ for the data