Python User Group Meeting: OpenAI and Cython

The plan:

18:30 Doors open, snacks, drinks

19:00 Dibya Chakravorty - Reinforcement Learning with OpenAI Gym - Teach a computer how to balance a pole on a moving cart

19:45 Stefan Behnel - Get native with Cython

20:30 Drinks & Networking

This meetup is organized together with PyMunich group.

Talk descriptions

1. Get native with Cython
   Cython is not only a very fast and comfortable way to let Python code talk
   to native code and libraries, it is also a widely used tool for speeding up
   Python code. The Cython compiler translates Python code to C or C++ code, and applies many static optimisations that make Python code run visibly faster than in the interpreter. But even better, it supports static type annotations that allow direct use of C/C++ data types and functions, which the compiler uses to convert and optimise the code into fast, native C. The tight integration of all three languages, Python, C and C++, makes it possible to freely mix Python features like generators and comprehensions with C/C++ features like native data types, pointer arithmetic or manually tuned memory management in the same code.

This talk by a core developer introduces the Cython compiler by interactive code examples, and shows how you can use it to talk to native code and speed up your Python code.