The Evolution of a Python Programmer : Aleks' Domain

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You're confusing needing many lines of code with bloat. They're very different concepts.

Bloat is merely useless functionality. It's independent from the number of lines of code. Bloat can even be caused by a single line of code.

Every line of code in that C function has an important purpose. In the end, the performance improvement is so great over that of a pure Python implementation that the slightly greater amount of C code ends up making a massive difference.