Travis Oliphant wrote:
Nonetheless, I would support the creation of a module called something like defaultfloat or some-other equally impressive name ;-) which contained floating-point defaults of these functions (with the same names).
I'd also like to see a way to make the constructors create floating-point arrays by default.
Numeric-24.2 (released Nov. 11, 2005)
14275 py24.exe 2905 py23.exe 9144 tar.gz
Numarray 1.5.1 (released Feb, 7, 2006)
10272 py24.exe 11883 py23.exe 12779 tar.gz
NumPy 0.9.8 (May 17, 2006)
3713 py24.exe 558 py23.exe 4111 tar.gz
While it is hard to read too much into numbers, this tells me that there are about 10,000 current users of Numeric/Numarray who have not even *tried* NumPy. In fact, Numarray downloads of 1.5.1 went up significantly from its earlier releases. Why is that? It could be that many of the downloads are "casual" users who need it for some other application (in which case they wouldn't feel inclined to try NumPy).
On the other hand, it is also possible that many are still scared away by the pre-1.0 development-cycle --- it has been a bit bumpy for the stalwarts who've braved the rapids as NumPy has matured. Changes like the proposal to move common functions from default integer to default float are exactly the kind of thing that leads people to wait on getting NumPy.
(just as an aside, a further possibility is the relative availability of documentation for numpy and the other array packages. I entirely understand the reasoning behind the Guide to NumPy being a for-money offering but it does present a significant barrier to adoption, particularly in an environment where the alternatives all offer for-free documentation above and beyond what is available in the docstrings). -- "You see stars that clear have been dead for years But the idea just lives on..." -- Bright Eyes