14. Extending IronPython with C#/VB.NET

This chapter covers
Creating class libraries for IronPython .NET attributes and IronPython Calling unmanaged code with P/Invoke Creating dynamic objects with C#/VB.NET Compiling assemblies at runtime

There is a standard mantra about performance when programming with Python (CPython). The mantra goes something like this: “Code in Python first; then profile and optimize your bottlenecks. Finally, if you still need your code to run faster, rewrite the performance-sensitive parts of your code in C.” Okay, as mantras go there are probably snappier ones, but it still contains a lot of wisdom. Of course, with IronPython we wouldn’t drop down to C^[1] but into C# or VB.NET instead.

^[1] Well, not usually. There are tools like SWIG that will allow you to generate .NET wrappers for C/C++ libraries.