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

[Jonah Lee]

On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Perry Greenfield wrote:

I'd like to second Perry Greenfield's comments too. I find that
development using Python (with or without Numerical Python) is much faster
than using C/C++/Fortran. Efficiency can be improved by using Numerical
Python or 'translating' some critical portion of the code to C++ and then
wrap the C++ code using SWIG. Translating Python code into C++ is in
general not a difficult task. My own benchmark shows that wrapped C++ code
using SWIG runs almost as fast as native C++ code. In addition,
'translating' pure Python code into Numerical Python code is very easy
too. Python is also wonderful in the iterative process of object-oriented
design which may be critical for the maintainence of the code base. I'm in
favor of having a reasonably good Python interface, i.e., a Python-centric
appoach. Just my two cents:-)

> I would like to second Paul Dubois' comments about the original message
> from Joe Harrington. I think it is probably naive to expect that developers
> will confine themselves to producing only tasks in C/C++/Fortran when much
> of what they can do can be done in the scripting language. I think the
> success of IDL in the astronomy community shows that if scripting language
> has the features that IDL has, a lot of applications will be written using
> it and use of C/C++/Fortran will be avoided as much as possible. In other
> words, I think the idea that splitting development into these two categories
> make it easy to switch to another scripting language later is unlikely
> to be right.
> 
> Indeed in our case, we find Python very attactive for developing software
> for those cases where the circle of users is fairly small but the need for
> the functionality is great (for example, analysis of calibration data).
> In these circumstances, developing such software in C/C++/Fortran is
> very costly and not worth the trouble. In fact, much of scientific software
> falls into this category. Very often, the ultimate in performance or 
> in code quality can be sacrificed. Better code that doesn't run quite so
> fast or may evidence some occasional run time errors that need correction
> than no program at all.
> 
> Perry Greenfield
> Space Telescope Science Institute
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Matrix-SIG maillist  -  Matrix-SIG@python.org
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/matrix-sig
> 

Regards,
Jonah

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