[Numpy-discussion] dtype repr change?

[Mark Wiebe]

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 5:07 PM, Gael Varoquaux <
gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 04:59:17PM -0500, Mark Wiebe wrote:
> >    but ultimately NumPy needs the ability to change its repr and other
> >    details like it in order to progress as a software project.
>
> You have to understand that numpy is the core layer on which people have
> build pretty huge scientific codebases with fairly little money flowing
> in to support. Any minor change to numpy cause turmoils in labs and is
> delt by people (student or researchers) on their spare time. I am not
> saying that there should not be any changes to numpy, just that the costs
> and benefits of these changes need to be weighted carefully. Numpy is not
> a young and agile project its a foundation library.
>

That's absolutely true. In my opinion, the biggest consequence of this is
that great caution needs to be taken during the release process, something
that Ralf has done a commendable job on.

This shouldn't affect the idea that there are progress and improvements in
the library. On the contrary, changes to such a core library can have just
as many positive ripple effects to all its dependencies as it can have
turmoils. The development trunk out of necessity will cause more turmoils
than release versions, otherwise there's no way to see whether a change
affects a lot of code out there or if its effects will be relatively minor.
I appreciate everyone out there that's running the code in master, producing
bug reports and in some cases pull requests based on their testing.

NumPy isn't a young and agile project, that's correct. It does however have
the potential to be agile. Many of the changes I've done deeper in the core
are with the aim of allowing NumPy to evolve more quickly without having to
change the exposed ABI and API.

Cheers,
Mark


>
> My two cents,
>
> Gaël
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