Cython VS mypyc

and again, everything that was released after using an older version of cython.

Packages using cython (note the linked issues) due to this change.

Just for reference,

* Nuitka[0] "is a Python compiler written in Python. It's fully compatible with Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, and 3.11."

* Pypy[1] "is a replacement for CPython" with builtin optimizations such as on the fly JIT compiles.

* Cython[2] "is an optimising static compiler for both the Python programming language and the extended Cython programming language... makes writing C extensions for Python as easy as Python itself."

* Numba[3] "is an open source JIT compiler that translates a subset of Python and NumPy code into fast machine code."

* Pyston[4] "is a performance-optimizing JIT for Python, and is drop-in compatible with ... CPython 3.8.12"

[0] https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka

[1] https://www.pypy.org/

[2] https://cython.org/

[3] https://numba.pydata.org/

[4] https://github.com/pyston/pyston

Profile and optimize the hotspots with cython (or whatever the cool kids are using these days... It's been a while.)

Cython - - embed demo

There are also just-in-time compilers available for some Python features, that compile those parts to machine code. That includes Numba (usable as a library within CPython) and Pypy (an alternative Python implementation that includes a JIT compiler to improve performance). There’s also Cython, which is a superset of Python that allows more directly interfacing with C and C++ functions, and compiling the resulting combined code.

Conceptually, Cython is mainly for accelerating Python code, and can _also_ access C code. Meanwhile CFFI is specifically for calling C code and nothing else. I recommend the video for the differences.

One concrete thing that pops to my mind is that Cython doesn't support Py_LIMITED_API which means that you need to ship a lot more binary wheels. At least the issue is still open (https://github.com/cython/cython/issues/2542) and Cython projects IME need new wheels for each minor Python release. Compare that to cffi projects that (musl & pypy aside) only have to ship wheels for one Python version / architecture: https://pypi.org/project/argon2-cffi-bindings/#files

As you can see, in this benchmark Starlite handily beats even blakchseep, a notoriously fast ASGI framework written in Cython

That would be interesting! You might already be aware. But there's mypyc[0], which is an AOT compiler for Python code with type hints (that, IIRC, mypy uses to compile itself into a native extension).

Wanted to give you a head-start on the lit-review for your students I guess :)

[0] https://github.com/mypyc/mypyc

https://github.com/mypyc/mypyc

> Mypyc compiles Python modules to C extensions. It uses standard Python type hints to generate fast code. Mypyc uses mypy to perform type checking and type inference.

> Mypyc can compile anything from one module to an entire codebase. The mypy project has been using mypyc to compile mypy since 2019, giving it a 4x performance boost over regular Python.

I have not experience a 4x boost, rather between 1.5x and 2x. I guess it depends on the code.

Funny how emergence works with tools. Give a language too few tools but viral circumstances - the ecosystem diverges (Lisps, Javascript). Give it too long an iteration time but killer guarantees, you end up with committees. Python not falling into either of these traps should be understood as nothing short of magic in emergence.

I only recently discovered that python's reference typechecker, mypy, has a small side project for typed python to emit C [1], written entirely in python. Nowadays with python's rich specializer ecosystem (LLVM, CUDA, and just generally vectorized math), the value of writing a small program in anything else diminishes quickly.

Imagine reading the C++wg release notes in the same mood that you would the python release notes.

[1] https://github.com/mypyc/mypyc

> Note that the mypyc issue tracker lives in this repository! Please don't file mypyc issues in the mypy issue tracker.

See https://github.com/mypyc/mypyc/blob/master/show_me_the_code....

What's the difference with mypyc [0] ? It also compiles Python to native code.

[0]: https://github.com/mypyc/mypyc

More recent approaches include mypyc which is (on the tin) quite close to what you describe, and taichi that lives in between.

https://github.com/mypyc/mypyc

> Mypyc compiles Python modules to C extensions. It uses standard Python type hints to generate fast code. Mypyc uses mypy to perform type checking and type inference.

Regarding the large execution time mentioned in your article, I discovered (mypyc)[https://github.com/mypyc/mypyc] on this subreddit in a post from the black formatter team https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/v2009i/im_that_person_who_got_black_compiled_with_mypyc/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

It's still alpha, but mypyc lets ordinary Python code be compiled to C extensions just by using type hints from the standard lib. It's currently used in the mypy project.

you can check out [`mypyc`](https://github.com/mypyc/mypyc) . It is used by mypy, black for speedup