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Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4)
From: |
Edward Jason Riedy |
Subject: |
Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4) |
Date: |
Wed, 13 Sep 2000 18:05:28 -0700 |
And "John W. Eaton" writes:
-
- Why Python in particular and not some other scripting language?
My reasons:
* The core developers have expressed an interest in good
(ieee754) fp support.
* The FFI is nice, expecially from C++.
* More of the people who will use the code I'm writing know
Python than other full-featured scripting languages.
* The implementation is still simple enough for me to twiddle
without a huge investment.
* A good deal of effort by others is going into making Python
easy to use / understand.
* Introspective enough that I may be able to get a distributed
version to work. Maybe.
* Code looks pretty.
Why other, not entirely dissimilar languages don't immediately
appeal to me for my current numerical work:
Dylan: Unstable implementation I'd have to port myself. I'd love
to use a good Dylan, or a Dylan-Python hybrid.
Erlang: Nice, but doesn't fit the problem domain.
Perl: The FFI is a mess, it's currently experiencing
Ada-disease, and bad experiences with its development
process.
Scheme: Inherent, mostly unjustified prejudice against it in
my target audience.
CL: Same.
ML: Likewise, plus my general dislike of strict static
typing at that level. Has odd FP operators due to
lack of polymorphism in the right places.
Haskell: Laziness doesn't mix well with tight memory
requirements, and monads are, well, monads.
APL: Heh. Yes, I know APL.
Lua: Too little infrastructure in the language.
Ruby: I don't know. Something about it doesn't feel right.
Forth, Smalltalk, other one-paradigm-fits-all-languages:
My main work (parallel, unsymmetric sparse matrix
factorization and associated problems) doesn't fit
into a single paradigm sanely.
Java: Don't get me started.
Pike, ElastiC, etc.:
If I want C, I'll use C.
The other 203983792039734920 languages out there:
No time to learn more right now.
Matlab-esque:
I need a good many general-purpose language features.
Matlab may have added them, but they feel foreign.
Obviously, many of these reasons are highly subjective. I'm not
going to pretend otherwise.
- But if I didn't want Matlab (or Octave), why would I choose
- Python?
To be honest, I'd really love to see a general mathematical
library that can be used in many quick-writing languages.
Octave's is a bit too tilted towards Matlab's way of thinking,
and the license would require my target audience to think
about licensing rather than science.
The library would have to be surprisingly low-level to allow
each language to layer its own way of thinking on it. I'm not
sure how much sense that makes, though.
Jason
- [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4), Edward Jason Riedy, 2000/09/04
- [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4), John W. Eaton, 2000/09/04
- Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4), Edward Jason Riedy, 2000/09/04
- Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4), John W. Eaton, 2000/09/05
- Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4), John W. Eaton, 2000/09/06
- Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4), Edward Jason Riedy, 2000/09/13
- Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4), John W. Eaton, 2000/09/13
- Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4),
Edward Jason Riedy <=
- Python (was: Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4)), John W. Eaton, 2000/09/13
- Re: Python (was: Re: [PATCH] Add min/max tests. (4/4)), Edward Jason Riedy, 2000/09/14