"Suffix arrays : How to compute them fast with Python"

The assumption is it's fast in Python without using Cython etc. My intuition says that looping and iterating in Python is slow. It seems like a great reference implementation, but I don't think anyone should use it if there are implementations that are (possibly) orders of magnitude faster.

I guess my bigger issue with this is that in many cases it's much more time efficient to just drop to Cython earlier on instead of fighting with the language.

I'm not sure about the difference, but yes :) I wanted an implementation that could fit on my screen and still be efficient. Of course Python is slow and even my algorithm is not the best (I explained why I chose it). But I believe this is one of the best implementation you can make of prefix doubling, especially against random data and I have never seen my tricks anywhere.