Python has a reputation for being one of the most convenient, richly outfitted, and downright useful programming languages. Execution speed? Not so much.
Enter Cython. The Cython language is a superset of Python that compiles to C, yielding performance boosts that can range from a few percent to several orders of magnitude, depending on the task at hand. For work that is bound by Python’s native object types, the speedups won’t be large. But for numerical operations, or any operations not involving Python’s own internals, the gains can be massive. This way, many of Python’s native limitations can be routed around or transcended entirely.
[ Get started with TensorFlow machine learning. • TensorFlow review: The best deep learning library gets better. • See what’s new in the latest version of TensorFlow. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld’s App Dev Report newsletter. ]With Cython, you can skirt many of Python’s native limitations or transcend them entirely—without having to give up Python’s ease and convenience. In this article, we’ll walk through the basic concepts behind Cython and create a simple Python application that uses Cython to accelerate one of its functions.