Matlab vs Python (was RE: Discussion: Introducing new operators for matrix computation)

[Paul Prescod]

Huaiyu Zhu wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> I thought I replied your email through email ... Ah, here it is:

Right, but you weren't the person who brought up the millions of Matlab
users this time.

> ...
> On the other hand, open source may beat them
> easily, as long as
> 
> 1. we are using a better language which has more potential
> 2. users have incentive to contribute because it's already useful
> 3. there's no big hurdle beyond what's already in Numerical Recipe

You presume a great deal of human labour which you cannot provide by
yourself. We cannot extend Python based on your faith that these people
will come along and do the work to make it a serious Matlab competitor.
Anyhow, you can prove me wrong by making MatrixPython as popular as
Python. Then we will come to YOU and ask if we can merge grammars to
unify our communities.

I could just as easily claim that if we add regular expressions to the
Python syntax, all of the Perl users would come over here. I don't have
any evidence, though.
-- 
 Paul Prescod - Not encumbered by corporate consensus
It's difficult to extract sense from strings, but they're the only
communication coin we can count on. 
	- http://www.cs.yale.edu/~perlis-alan/quotes.html