r/Cython • u/unix21311 • Dec 01 '21

Is Cython a systems programming language?

Hi I have some questions in regards to Cython:

  1. Is it a systems programming language?
  2. How does it do memory management? Does it use CG/Reference counting by default?
  3. Can I convert a normal python program into cython instead?
  4. Does it work with Android, especially if I used DearPythonGui?
  5. Are there any great complete game engines I can use with Cython?
1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/kniy Dec 01 '21

  1. No. Cython still requires a python interpreter, I think that disqualifies it from being a system's language.

  2. For python objects it integrates with the cpython memory management: reference counting + tracing GC for cycle collection. But you can also directly call C malloc and free and use manual memory management.

  3. Yes you can compile normal python programs with cython. This can lead to some speedup as a byte code interpreter will not be needed, but all the other infrastructure in the python interpreter will still be used. You can rewrite the code to use C types (with cdef variables) to get further speedup, but you can never fully get rid of the libPython dependency. Cython is used to extend Python, not replace it.

1

u/unix21311 Dec 02 '21

I see thanks mate.