[Numpy-discussion] Future directions for SciPy in light of meeting at Berkeley

[konrad.hinsen at laposte.net]

On Mar 9, 2005, at 9:32, Michiel Jan Laurens de Hoon wrote:

> Travis Oliphant wrote:
>> It would seem that while the scipy conference demonstrates a 
>> continuing and even increasing use of Python for scientific 
>> computing,  not as many of these users are scipy devotees.   Why?
>> I think the answers come down to a few issues which I will attempt to 
>> answer with proposals.
>> 1) Plotting
> While plotting is important, I don't think that SciPy needs to offer 
> plotting capabilities in order to become successful. Numerical Python 
> doesn't include plotting, and it's

...

Thanks for your three comments, they reflect exactly my views as well, 
so I'll just add a "+1" to them.


There is only one aspect I would like to add: predictibility of 
development.

Python has become my #1 tool in my everyday research over the last 
years. I haven't done any scientific computation for at least five 
years that did not involve some Python code. Which means that I am very 
much dependent on Python and some Python packages. Moreover, I publish 
computational methods that I develop in the form of Python code that is 
used by a community large enough to make support an important 
consideration.

There are only two kinds of computational tools on which I can accept 
being dependent: those that are supported by a sufficiently big and 
stable community that I don't need to worry about their disappearence 
or sudden mutation into something different, and those small enough 
that I can maintain them in usable state myself if necessary. Python is 
in the first category, Numeric in the second. SciPy is not in either 
one.

The proposed division of SciPy into separately installable maintainable 
subpackages could make a big difference there. The core could actually 
be both easily maintainable and supported by a big enough community. So 
I am all for it, and I expect to contribute to such a loser package 
collection as well.

Konrad.
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Konrad Hinsen
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