[SciPy-user] Inconsistent function calls?

[Christopher Barker]

Ivo Maljevic wrote:
> why bother to make something that looks like matlab, 

who ever said numpy "looks like matlab", any more than it look s like 
any number of other programming environments...

> Matplotlib does a pretty good job at  replicating
> matlab plot functions, at least at the level I need it to.

Because is was designed exactly to do that -- but I think MPL's Matlab 
replicating has been a hindrance, rather than a help, to a good API. 
However, is has been a help to its adoption.

You may have noticed that over the years MPL is moving away from matlab, 
toward a more pythonic API.

Personally, I like python so much more than Matlab exactly for these 
differences (and so many more). I suppose it's tough if you switch back 
and forth, but I haven't touched Matlab in years.

It is rand() that is inconsistent, and that is an accident of history.

> what ones([3,3]) does, the same way random.rand(3,3) does,

well, rand() is a convenience function, and doesn't take a bunch of 
other parameters.  In fact, it's listed under "Compatibility functions", 
and is really a wrapper for:

numpy.random.uniform, which takes a shape argument.

> the reason why I included that error message in my previous message 
> is because I think it is completely non-helpful.

That's another issue -- non-helpful error messages do show up a lot -- 
in that case, if the user had typed:

np.zeros(3, dtype=3)

the error message would make sense. If you can suggest a better message, 
patches are always welcome.

-Chris



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