On 22 Mai, 13:28, Tim Chase <python.l...@tim.thechases.com> wrote: > Just as an aside, last I checked, mercurial had some core code in > C for speed.
I've been writing scrintific software for over 10 years. I always find myself writing small pieces of C now and then. It is usally because header files are too complicated to expose to Python. I will e.g. make OpenGL calls from C, and then call the rendering routine from Python with ctypes. It saves me the work of exposing OpenGL (or whatever) to Python. There are already header files that make the API available to C. Yes I know about PyOpenGL, but then there is the speed argument: From C I can make epeated calls to functions like glVertex4f with minial loss of efficacy. Calling glVertex4f from Python (e.g. PyOpenGL) would give me the Python (and possibly ctypes) overhead for each call, which is considerable. So there is the two arguments for using C now and then: (1) Save programming time by not having to repeat header files and (2) make programs run faster by avoiding the Python overhead. Some times it matters, some times it don't. But it does not make sense to write C or C++ all the time, nor does it help to use C or C++ for I/O bound problems. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
