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double support in Python?

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Thu Feb 13 18:53:42 EST 2003 
Brandon Van Every wrote:

> If Python doesn't broaden its use cases, it doesn't gain mainstream
> acceptance and the language dies, beaten out by things such as Java
> and C#.

Except that what you're asking for is not a broadening of its use cases,
it's an attempt to cuddle up to a very specialized special interest
group.  There's simply no reason for Python to do this natively, given
that Numeric/NumPy does handles packaging of C floats/C doubles just
fine.

You're complaining that Python doesn't have low-level support for C
floats (not Python floats, which are C doubles).  But you're planning on
using Python as a high-level driving language _anyway_, so what the hell
difference does that make?  As long as you can pass around and quickly
manipulate large bundles of C floats -- which you can, with Numeric --
then it makes no difference whether Python natively supports them or
not.  If you're going to be doing a computation in Python, then
low-levelness or absolute performance requirements are not at issue ...
because if they were, you'd be writing them in your C++ layer, not the
Python layer.

This entire subthread has been a complete red herring, with you playing
the part of the herring.

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