[Numpy-discussion] ANN: MaskedArray as a subclass of ndarray?-?followup

[Stefan van der Walt]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 02:13:52PM +0000, Matt Knox wrote:
> > Moving the implementation to the C-level also has its downside.  To
> > me, at least, Python code is much more readable and hence easier to
> > maintain.
> > 
> > Is there a way that we can implement only the speed-critical methods
> > in C?
> > 
> > Cheers
> > Stéfan
> > 
> 
> Implementing the whole thing in C also has the side benefit of the possibility
> making a nice C level api available to these sub-classes. And I suspect the core
> numpy developers are comfortable enough with C that maintainability is
> *probably* not a huge concern here.

A "nice C level api" sounds like the definition of oxymoron :) Why
would we argue for more C than absolutely necessary in a Python-based
library?

It's not trivial to code or maintain C API based code properly.  Isn't
that, to some extent at least, why projects like PyPy receive so much
attention?  I wouldn't be surprised if such a translation of MA has
many more bugs than the Python version, unless consistent and rigid
unit testing is being done.

Have a nice weekend!

Cheers
Stéfan