[w8rbt]

I wrote a demuxer for CAN Bus data in C++. Then, I built a Python module using Boost.python so that our Python programmers could simply 'import demux' and write scripts to see and manipulate individual variables, load data into the DB, etc.

The productivity gains of Python scripts that could demux were huge. It made demuxing fast and easily accessible to all of the Python coders. Also, the underlying C++ code could be used in our C# environment too, although I'm not sure if they ever did that. So, we had the ability to use the exact same underlying C++ code in multiple dev environments to ensure consistency.

The downside, IMO, was maintaining the modules. The C++ code itself was short and easy to test (maybe 100 or 200 LOC), but you need good documentation and the ability to build the modules for various versions of Python, with various toolchains, on various systems, etc.

I would do it again if in the same or similar situation.