I'd guess the benefits are related to performance - Wes is known as something of a speed junkie (see also his vbench project). I know there's quite a bit of cod

I'd guess the benefits are related to performance - Wes is known as something of a speed junkie (see also his vbench project). I know there's quite a bit of code in pandas that makes it much faster than a naive implementation of a similar interface. That said, if it causes unexpected behaviour, check to see whether it's a bug.