Could be much faster

[Permafacture]

I happened to implement this algorithm and found my version much faster. Also, I could not get your version to do 200000 pts (which who knows if anyone needs that). Situations such as being on a server might benefit from a faster, less resource intense implementation. Here's my Visvalingam-Whyatt code

Here is a comparison between our two implementations I did in IPython.

import numpy as np
from visvalingam.visvalingam import VisvalingamSimplification
from polysimplify import VWSimplifier
n = 5000
thetas = np.linspace(0,2*np.pi,n)
thetas = np.linspace(0,2*np.pi,n)
pts = [[np.sin(x),np.cos(x)] for x in thetas]

def milkbread(pts):
    simplifier = VisvalingamSimplification(pts)
    simplifier.enrichLineString()

def permafacture(pts):
    simplifier = VWSimplifier(pts)

%timeit milkbread(pts)
    1 loops, best of 3: 21.7 s per loop

%timeit permafacture(pts)
    10 loops, best of 3: 115 ms per loop

len(pts)
5000