Hacker News Reader

Find a slow part of your Python/Ruby/Lua application that could use some speeding up and then write an extension for it in C.

Some useful reading:

http://www.swig.org/

http://dan.iel.fm/posts/python-c-extensions/

https://blog.jcoglan.com/2012/07/29/your-first-ruby-native-e...

View on HN

I agree with @hackerboos, definitely write a c-extension. It will not only enhance your knowledge of python but you will also learn C/C++ during the development. I did something similar wrote a ruby c-extension https://github.com/chaitanyav/fibonacci for fun. Also, checkout the CS107 videos on youtube which are C based (look for cs107 stanford).

you can also try writing the core utils using your newly learned C/C++ skills.(https://github.com/chaitanyav/cprograms)

Agree with hackerboos, but don't use Swig, use the CFFI in PyPy (it has a CPython port). I recommend writing a bloom filter or an off heap data store. Another option is to hack on the Lua VM or Redis, both are excellent C code bases.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com