[Numpy-discussion] Proposed Roadmap Overview

[Charles R Harris]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 4:44 PM, David Cournapeau <cournape@gmail.com>wrote:

> I don't think c++ has any significant advantage over c for high
> performance libraries. I am not convinced by the number of people argument
> either: it is not my experience that c++ is easier to maintain in a open
> source context, where the level of people is far from consistent. I doubt
> many people did not contribute to numoy because it is in c instead if c++.
> While this is somehow subjective, there are reasons that c is much more
> common than c++ in that context.
>

I think C++ offers much better tools than C for the sort of things in
Numpy. The compiler will take care of lots of things that now have to be
hand crafted and I wouldn't be surprised to see the code size shrink by a
significant factor.

> I would much rather move most part to cython to solve subtle ref counting
> issues, typically.
>

Not me, I'd rather write most stuff in C/C++ than Cython, C is cleaner ;)
Cython good for the Python interface, but once past that barrier C is
easier, and C++ has lots of useful things.

> The only way that i know of to have a stable and usable abi is to wrap the
> c++ code in c. Wrapping c++ libraries in python  has always been a pain in
> my experience. How are template or exceptions handled across languages ? it
> will also be a significant issue on windows with open source compilers.
>
> Interestingly, the api from clang exported to other languages is in c...
>

The api isn't the same as the implementation language. I wouldn't prejudge
these issues, but some indication of how they would be solved might be
helpful.

<snip>

Chuck
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