[Numpy-discussion] Silent Broadcasting considered harmful

Sturla Molden sturla.molden at gmail.com
Mon Feb 9 01:48:15 EST 2015


Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree.  I knew about broadcasting as soon as I started using numpy,
> so I can honestly say this has never surprised me.

Fortran 90 has broadcasting too. NumPy's broadcasting was inspired by
Fortran 90, which was the lingua franca of scientific computing in the
1990s. Like NumPy, Fortran 90 is an array language, not a matrix language
like Matlab.

> There are other major incompatibilities between Matlab and numpy, such
> as 0-based indices, and array views.

Yes. NumPy is not Matlab and not intending to clone Matlab. Those who want
Matlab know where to find it. Those who need a free Matlab clone can
download Scilab.

Sturla




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