So, I am very interested in making sure I remember the details of the counterproposal. What I recall is that you wanted to be able to differentiate between a "bit-pattern" mask and a boolean-array mask in the API. I believe currently even when bit-pattern masks are implemented the difference will be "hidden" from the user on the Python level. I am sure to be missing other parts of the discussion as I have been in and out of it. Thanks, -Travis On Oct 25, 2011, at 7:02 PM, Matthew Brett wrote:
Hi,
Thank you for your gracious email.
On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Travis Oliphant <oliphant@enthought.com> wrote:
It is a shame that Nathaniel and perhaps Matthew do not feel like their voice was heard. I wish I could have participated more fully in some of the discussions. I don't know if I could have really helped, but I would have liked to have tried to perhaps work alongside Mark to integrate some of the other ideas that had been expressed during the discussion. Unfortunately, I was traveling in NYC most of the time that Mark was working on this project and did not get a chance to interact with him as much as I would have liked. My view is that we didn't get quite to where I thought we would get, nor where I think we could be. I think Nathaniel and Matthew provided very specific feedback that was helpful in understanding other perspectives of a difficult problem. In particular, I really wanted bit-patterns implemented. However, I also understand that Mark did quite a bit of work and altered his original designs quite a bit in response to community feedback. I wasn't a major part of the pull request discussion, nor did I merge the changes, but I support Charles if he reviewed the code and felt like it was the right thing to do. I likely would have done the same thing rather than let Mark Wiebe's work languish. Merging Mark's code does not mean there is not more work to be done, but it is consistent with the reality that currently development on NumPy happens when people have the time to do it. I have not seen anything to convince me that there is not still time to make specific API changes that address some of the concerns. Perhaps, Nathaniel and or Matthew could summarize their concerns again and if desired submit a pull request to revert the changes. However, there is a definite bias against removing working code unless the arguments are very strong and receive a lot of support from others.
Honestly - I am not sure whether there is any interest now, in the arguments we made before. If there is, who is interested? I mean, past politeness.
I wasn't trying to restart that discussion, because I didn't know what good it could do. At first I was hoping that we could ask whether there was a better way of dealing with disagreements like this. Later it seemed to me that the atmosphere was getting bad, and I wanted to say that because I thought it was important.
Thank you for continuing to voice your opinions even when it may feel that the tide is against you. My view is that we only learn from people who disagree with us.
Thank you for saying that. I hope that y'all will tell me if I am making it harder for you to disagree, and I am sorry if I did so here.
Best,
Matthew _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
--- Travis Oliphant Enthought, Inc. oliphant@enthought.com 1-512-536-1057 http://www.enthought.com