Seeking Multi-Platform I/O Libraries?

Posted by Cliff on Friday April 19, 2002 @12:11AM from the input-and-output-on-your-OS dept.

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I'm just getting ready to plunge into a new project, and joy of joys have been given complete freedom when it comes to the implementation language - so long as the program will build and run on both x86 Linux and Windows. Now, I don't need a GUI, this is systems stuff only (processing binary executables in fact, so lots of bitfiddling and big nasty algorithms over hairy data structures) so pretty much all I need are standard IO libraries. C is currently at the top of my list..but what other language should I be looking at? I'm happy to learn a new one, and have the go ahead to do it..like I say, they want absolute speed. Can someone suggest a better language? C++ is out, it does come with a speed hit (using C++ properly anyway, not as a souped-up C). If I'm gonna take the speed hit, I may as well consider something like Ocaml which might let me claw the speed back with better algorithms and data structures.."

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Consider Python... Wait! Don't leave!!! by Phoukka · 2002-04-19 00:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

I know it's a bit of a stretch, but consider Python. Prototype the heck out of the system in Python, profile the application, then recode the bottlenecks in C. Use SWIG to generate your interfaces. Easier to program, easier to extend, easier to read/maintain. Shorter programming time, too.

You'll be happier, your fellow programmers will be happier, your successor programmers will be happier, and the chewy parts of your code will still be really fast. Think about it.