[Numpy-discussion] Proposed Roadmap Overview

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 11:09 PM, David Cournapeau <cournape at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 10:50 PM, Sturla Molden <sturla at molden.no> wrote:
>
>>  > In an ideal world, we would have a better language than C++ that can
>> be spit out as > C for portability.
>>
>> What about a statically typed Python? (That is, not Cython.) We just
>> need to make the compiler :-)
>
> There are better languages than C++ that has most of the technical
> benefits stated in this discussion (rust and D being the most
> "obvious" ones), but whose usage is unrealistic today for various
> reasons: knowledge, availability on "esoteric" platforms, etc… A new
> language is completely ridiculous.

Off-topic: rust is an obvious one? That makes my day, Graydon is an
old friend and collaborator :-). But FYI, it wouldn't be relevant
anyway; its emphasis on concurrency means that it can easily call C,
but you can't really call it from C -- it needs to "own" the overall
runtime. And I failed to convince him to add numerical-array-relevant
features like operator overloading to make it more convenient for
numerical programmers attracted by the concurrency support :-(.

There are some very small values of "new language" that might be
relevant alternatives, like -- if templates are the big draw for C++,
then making the existing code generators suck less might do just as
well, while avoiding the build system and portability hassles of C++.
*shrug*

-- Nathaniel