charris/numpy — comment on commit a089a34c1fdaabc96121bcbe0fe8aa4857866337
File: numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarraytypes.h line 1444
By mwiebe:

Yeah. C++ has a language feature specifically to deal with this kind of thing: declare the reference count variable as "mutable." I'm always in favour of const-correctness, though, using it consistently can catch lots of silly errors.