[Matrix-SIG] Re: a full-blown interactive data analysis environment

[david.buscher@durham.ac.uk]

On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Ryszard Czerminski wrote:

> It would help a lot to start to develop some document
> which would describe what do we want from this new package
> (i.e. requirements).
> 
> This can be a good basis for further discussion.
> 
> It should probably include as well on some general
> level analysis and description of existing packages
> in this field (matlab, idl, root (http://root.cern.ch),
> scilab - to name the few) and what makes them inadequate
> enough to justify development of
> yet-another-data-analysis-package.
> 
> One basic reason - at least for this group - is lack of
> Python front-end (:-).

To some extent such documents exist and have been referred to in previous
posts (can't immediately lay my hands on the URLs). What these documents
do not resolve though is the scope of the current project being proposed,
and to some extent we need a way of gauging this major question before
proceeding.

The options I see are:

[1] A python-specific IDL-alike, well documented and integrated, having
the major advantages that have been described (basically all the
specific advantages of python and general interpreted language and open
source advantages).

[2] A non-language specific system which can be rapidly ported to the next
flavour-of-the-month language (not that I think python is
flavour-of-the-month!).

My feeling is that the [2] is a much harder project, and we might only
have a feeling of how to do it by the end of doing [1]. Obviously it
would be a great help if while doing [1] we had [2] in mind. What do
others think?

cheers,
David


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