The reason C becomes relevant to Python users isn’t typically because the interpreter is written in C, but because so many important libraries (especially numpy) are implemented in C.
The reason C becomes relevant to Python users isn’t typically because the interpreter is written in C, but because so many important libraries (especially numpy) are implemented in C.
I agree with everything in the article, which makes it all the more unfortunate that I really detest Go as a language.
(It’s getting better, though.)
Unlikely, unless his view has changed substantially in the last seven years: https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/01/11/TheDarkPath.html
I think his views on how to achieve good quality software are nearly antithetical to the goals of Rust. As expressed in that blog post and in Clean Code, he thinks better discipline, particularly through writing lots and lots of explicit unit tests, is the only path to reliable software. Rust, on the other hand, is very much designed to make the compiler and other tooling bear as much of the burden of correctness as possible.
(To be clear, I realize you’re kidding. But I do think it’s important to know just how at odds the TDD philosophy is from the “safe languages” philosophy.)
Extension modules can be, and are, written in Rust and C++. And PyPy has a compatibility layer to run extensions (such as numpy) that are written for CPython.
The reason extension modules are typically in C is of course the API is in C, but that’s true of
cffi
as well (though you’re right thatcffi
is more portable). And the reason the API is in C is more fundamental than “CPython is written in C”.