Travis E. Oliphant wrote:
An IronPython compatible version of NumPy would be great. Of course it could be done by using C# to write NumPy, but I'm not sure that this would really be any less work than creating a "glue" layer that allowed most (or all) C-Python extensions to work with IronPython.
I'm curious about why all the discussion is about putting Python and its extensions on top of C# and very little discussion about just using C#-based tools as an extension from CPython.
Python .NET is a great example of what I'm referring to.
The C# language and the CLR does solve some problems, but it does not solve all the problems related to scientific computing that it could. In particular, I wish it's cross-platform visibility where higher. Mono is a great start, but there are a lot of C# libraries that just don't get made to work on Linux or Mac OS X.
The task of moving scipy to sit on top of the CLR seems rather large without some automatic tool to allow calling CPython extensions from the CLR that works in a cross-platform way.
This is exactly what Resolver hopes to achieve in the long-run. I already have a proof-of-concept hack that already allows you to use CPython extensions from IronPython, using the Python.NET work: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/ironpython/cpython_extensions.shtml I had matplotlib (using numpy and Tkinter) working - but it is only a proof of concept. :-) In the long run we would like to provide a mechanism that allows CPython extensions to be used seamlessly from IronPython. We're starting with Numpy (and not by reimplementing in C#) because we have customers who want to use it. On the CLR subject, the CLR is a great runtime. Advantages include a powerful JIT, no GIL, an accepted (and widely used) technology in the corporate world, and a native GUI library for Windows (better than any I've seen for CPython). Michael http://www.manning.com/foord
I don't really see the benefit that the CLR offers (unless all the hype is just so you can write code that runs in a browser --- in which case, are you really going to run matrix inversion on the CLR in a browser?)
How does legacy code interact with the "magic" of the CLR?
What are people's opinions about the value of NumPy and SciPy on the CLR?
-Travis O.
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