I just came across Cython, while I was looking out for ways to optimize Python code. I read various posts on stackoverflow, the python wiki and read the article "General Rules for Optimization".

Cython is something which grasps my interest the most; instead of writing C-code for yourself, you can choose to have other datatypes in your python code itself.

Here is a silly test i tried,

#!/usr/bin/python
# test.pyx
def test(value):
    for i in xrange(value):
    i**2
    if(i==1000000):
        print i

test(10000001)

$ time python test.pyx

real    0m16.774s 
user    0m16.745s
sys     0m0.024s

$ time cython test.pyx

real    0m0.513s 
user    0m0.196s 
sys     0m0.052s

Now, honestly, i`m dumbfounded. The code which I have used here is pure python code, and all I have changed is the interpreter. In this case, if cython is this good, then why do people still use the traditional Python interpretor? Are there any reliability issues for Cython?