Writing extensions
As already said, writing extensions is not a simple task but, in return for your hard work, it can give you a lot of advantages. The easiest approach to creating extensions is to use tools such as Cython. Cython allows you to write C extensions using language that greatly resembles Python without all the intricacies of the Python/C API. It will increase your productivity and make code easier to develop, read, and maintain.
Anyway, if you are new to this topic, it is good to start your adventure with extensions by writing one using nothing more than bare C language and the Python/C API. This will improve your understanding of how extensions work and will also help you to appreciate the advantages of alternative solutions. For the sake of simplicity, we will take a simple algorithmic problem as an example and try to implement it using the two following different approaches:
- Writing a pure C extension
- Using Cython
Our problem will...