[Cython] Pi in the sky: Alternate back-end?

[Robert Bradshaw]

On Jan 26, 2009, at 5:09 AM, Magnus Lie Hetland wrote:

> On Jan 26, 2009, at 12:48, Michael Abshoff wrote:
>
>> I do not know if Jython is faster than CPython, but why would you
>> want to use it other than the embedding advantage? I am curious here
>> since I never had more than superficial contact with Jython.
>
> Basically, it would be to use code that's already written in Java. The
> Jython part wouldn't be expected to be fast :-)

I think you can already do this with Jython, though it's not compiled  
ahead of time.

> As for what Stefan said aboud losing cdef-stuff -- I'll take his word
> for the coupling between Cython and C, but the syntax would be just as
> useful for type declarations for Java (but with a completely different
> translator then, I guess :-)

You wouldn't lose all the cdef stuff, it could still be useful to  
type things like floats and ints, and perhaps specialized java types.  
However, you wouldn't have pointers, and a huge benefit from Cython  
is being able to link to existing C/C++ libraries. There is a lot of  
C/CPython specific stuff in Cython as well, stuff like refcounting  
and virtual function pointer tables are not needed in a JVM context.

In short, I think it could be done, but may be a lot easier to adapt  
Jython to do what you want (if it doesn't already) than Cython.

- Robert