[Numpy-discussion] NA masks in the next numpy release?

Matthew Brett matthew.brett at gmail.com
Tue Oct 25 20:02:21 EDT 2011


Hi,

Thank you for your gracious email.

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Travis Oliphant <oliphant at enthought.com> wrote:
> It is a shame that Nathaniel and perhaps Matthew do not feel like their
> voice was heard.   I wish I could have participated more fully in some of
> the discussions.  I don't know if I could have really helped, but I would
> have liked to have tried to perhaps work alongside Mark to integrate some of
> the other ideas that had been expressed during the discussion.
> Unfortunately,  I was traveling in NYC most of the time that Mark was
> working on this project and did not get a chance to interact with him as
> much as I would have liked.
> My view is that we didn't get quite to where I thought we would get, nor
> where I think we could be.  I think Nathaniel and Matthew provided very
> specific feedback that was helpful in understanding other perspectives of a
> difficult problem.     In particular, I really wanted bit-patterns
> implemented.    However, I also understand that Mark did quite a bit of work
> and altered his original designs quite a bit in response to community
> feedback.   I wasn't a major part of the pull request discussion, nor did I
> merge the changes, but I support Charles if he reviewed the code and felt
> like it was the right thing to do.  I likely would have done the same thing
> rather than let Mark Wiebe's work languish.
> Merging Mark's code does not mean there is not more work to be done, but it
> is consistent with the reality that currently development on NumPy happens
> when people have the time to do it.    I have not seen anything to convince
> me that there is not still time to make specific API changes that address
> some of the concerns.
> Perhaps, Nathaniel and or Matthew could summarize their concerns again and
> if desired submit a pull request to revert the changes.   However, there is
> a definite bias against removing working code unless the arguments are very
> strong and receive a lot of support from others.

Honestly - I am not sure whether there is any interest now, in the
arguments we made before.   If there is, who is interested?  I mean,
past politeness.

I wasn't trying to restart that discussion, because I didn't know what
good it could do.   At first I was hoping that we could ask whether
there was a better way of dealing with disagreements like this.
Later it seemed to me that the atmosphere was getting bad, and I
wanted to say that because I thought it was important.

> Thank you for continuing to voice your opinions even when it may feel that
> the tide is against you.   My view is that we only learn from people who
> disagree with us.

Thank you for saying that.   I hope that y'all will tell me if I am
making it harder for you to disagree,  and I am sorry if I did so
here.

Best,

Matthew



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