Can anyone recomend a good intoduction to C...

[Alex Martelli]

"Pearu Peterson" <pearu at cens.ioc.ee> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.21.0103102137300.7964-100000 at kev.ioc.ee...
>
> On Sat, 10 Mar 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:
>
> > "Expected" is correct; it's a social issue, NOT a technical one --
> > technically, C++ is a better choice for most Python extensions &c
    [snip]
> I must say that earlier I had also an opinion that no matter what I would
> not use C++ for extending Python --- the reasons of my opinion are
> now irrelevant after I learned about Boost. Though I had a gap about 2
> years of programming in C++, interfacing a C++ library to Python using
> Boost was so easy that I caught up with C++ and started to use it on

Glad to see somebody seconding my opinion -- particularly somebody
who was so adamantly set _against_ C++ before the Boost experience
(remember how astonished you were that I even _considered_ C++ for
gmpy...?  It would be done by now, and well on its way to a second
and richer release, if I had chosen C++ rather than C...:-).


> In conclusion, extending Python with C++ libraries in connection with
> Boost works very fine on Linux **if** you have plenty of memory available
> in your computer for compilation. At least, that's my experience.

Very good point.  Yes, depending on your compiler, building template-
rich C++ libraries can be a problem, if you're memory-scarce.  On my
old home Win98 machine, with VC++6, I get by with 64M without too
many tears -- but for a newer WinME box for my girlfriend I insisted
on 128M, and my own sooner-or-later Athlon/Linux box will have 256M
for sure (fortunately, that IS dirt-cheap today, _if_ one doesn't aim at
DDR or even Rambus...!-).


Alex