[Numpy-discussion] Deprecate matrices in 1.15 and remove in 1.17?

[josef.pktd at gmail.com]

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 9:23 AM, Marten van Kerkwijk <
m.h.vankerkwijk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I wondered if the move to python3-only starting with numpy 1.17 would
> be a good reason to act on what we all seem to agree: that the matrix
> class was a bad idea, with its overriding of multiplication and lack
> of support for stacks of matrices.


I don't think the matrix class was a bad idea at the time.

numpy was the underdog, I came from GAUSS and Matlab and numpy
arrays were just weird, especially loosing a dimension all the time
and the heavy required use of np.newaxis.
I guess nowadays kids don't learn `matrix` languages first anymore.

recarrays are another half-hearted feature in numpy that is mostly
obsolete with pandas and pandas_like DataFrames in other
packages.


(I don't mind the changes, but the deprecation cycle is often short,
especially for users like me that update numpy only about every 3 main
versions.)

Josef


> For 1.17, minimum python supposedly
> is >=3.5, so we will be guaranteed to have the matrix multiply
> operator @ available, and hence there is arguably even less of a case
> for keeping the matrix class; removing it would allow taking out quite
> a bit of accumulated special-casing (the immediate reasons for writing
> this were gh-10123 and 10132).
>
> What do people think? If we do go in this direction, we might want to
> add PendingDeprecationWarning for 1.15 (maybe DeprecationWarning for
> python3; for python2 matrix would never disappear).
>
All the best,
>
> Marten
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