Comment by joshdavham

Comment by joshdavham 6 days ago

6 replies

View on Hacker News

Python packages written in low-level languages like C/C++ and Rust.

There are currently so many cool open source projects in the python ecosystem that involve writing python packages in low-level languages. But unfortunately, I've barely written any low-level code since university, so these projects are effectively out of reach for me at the moment.

However, I do plan on learning Rust sometime later this year and there are number of smaller projects that I plan on working on!

tuveson 6 days ago

C is not as hard to get into as you might think, and probably necessary to be at least a little bit comfortable with if you want to write Python libraries or understand Python internals. I would suggest Beej’s guide, if you’re looking for a place to start!

https://beej.us/guide/bgc/

Reply View 1 reply
  • joshdavham 6 days ago

    Many thanks for the resource!

    I did do some C in uni and I remember not finding it too terrible and actually pretty fun, but yeah, it does feel intimidating to come back to.

    Reply View 0 replies
karmakurtisaani 6 days ago

Do you have examples of such projects? I have some low-level language knowledge and might be interested in giving it a shot.

Reply View 1 reply
  • joshdavham 6 days ago

    Yeah I have quite a few examples. However, they're pretty niche projects that require a bunch of non-programming domain knowledge such as Japanese linguistics or using a Rust-based machine learning framework to optimize the parameters of a spaced repetition model.

    Reply View 0 replies
jononor 5 days ago

pybind11 is your friend. Focus on small self-contained functions first. For numerical functions you can then take it mostly our of a book. See if you can speed up some simple and common operation within your problem domain of interest.

Reply View 1 reply