Build your Python Extensions with Rust!

4:15pm - 4:40pm on Saturday, October 5 in Madison

Paul Ganssle

Watch:

https://youtu.be/1KC43QuJKlE

Description

When your Python needs to be fast, one powerful tool is the ability to write compiled extension modules. Normally this is done using the C API, but that requires managing reference counts and memory allocation and is nearly impossible to do correctly for non-trivial programs. In this talk, we’ll look at how you can write extension modules in Rust - a memory-safe systems programming language that is increasingly popular as a replacement for C and C++, and the most loved language in the Stack Overflow developer survey 4 years running.

This talk will focus on pyo3 and milksnake, two popular libraries that provide very different approaches for writing Rust extensions; it will cover a basic introduction to the libraries, and compare their relative strengths and weaknesses. These will also be compared to C and Cython extension modules from a performance, safety and maintainability perspective.