Good API design doesn't require any particular background, just clear thinking. If you like the way Mathematica does it, I strongly encourage you to study that design and make a Julian design that is inspired by it. If it makes sense, we'll be happy to adopt it.
On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Tom Breloff <[email protected]> wrote: > It's pretty unrealistic to assume that a new language, developed by a > small group of developers located around the world, will have the > consistency and polish of a commercial language that has been in > development for about 30 years with significant resources behind it. It's > mind boggling how well the language has turned out considering the > relatively tiny resources available. As has been stated, if you come > across specific inconsistencies in design, etc, then you should take it > upon yourself to either fix it or propose specific solutions. Rome was not > built in a day... > > > On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 11:01:32 AM UTC-4, François Fayard wrote: >> >> On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 4:51:00 PM UTC+2, Stefan Karpinski wrote: >>> >>> Just to clarify my position, I'm all for better and more generic APIs, >>> but until we come up with such and have implementations for them, legacy >>> names like sprandn aren't hurting anyone – they get the job done and >>> they're what many people using sparse matrices are familiar with. If you >>> want to improve the state of affairs, the best approach is not to complain >>> about it, but to design something better, get some feedback, and implement >>> it. >>> >> >> As some people have noticed, I am a new user, and I don't have an >> overview of the language. I only have an experience with Mathematica ans >> the solution they use for their system which is closed to multiple >> dispatch. If Mathematica has such a nice consistency, it's mainly because >> someone has enforced a very strict policy (my guess is that Stephen Wolfram >> is this guy). >> >> I can help on designing numerical algorithms which is why I've coded a >> few lines for ODEs. That's my background. I don't have experience in >> designing guidelines, but my point is that I need them to feel comfortable >> in developing in Julia. >> >
