Darren Dale wrote:
[...]
> Why do we need a single namespace? It seems unadvisable. There is additional
> overhead with namespace lookups: running numpy.arange(10) a million times
> takes 15% longer than arange(10). I would have thought it best to do more
> of "from w import x, y, z"
I have indeed been concerned about this performance aspect, and it was a
consideration in dropping the mpl namespace. John's original
prescription ("import matplotlib.lines as lines") was very close to what
we eventually converged on ("from matplotlib import lines as mlines"),
but we will still be doing more namespace lookups now than we were
before numpification. The advantage is fewer clashes and clearer code;
I won't have to rack my brains to try to remember (or pause to go to the
top of the file to look) where a given function came from; the
disadvantages are the extra lookups, and the increased difficulty in
keeping code compact, concise, and nicely formatted. I have come around
to the view that for the most part, the advantages outweigh the
disadvantages, and we have a reasonable compromise; but as John
mentioned in our weekend discussions, we might want to make
exceptions--so long as we don't end up with more exceptions than
rule-followers. Maybe the thing to do is to make exceptions sparingly
where it looks like there is a substantial benefit, either for
performance or for readability. In practice, I expect that the penalty
for the extra lookups will be negligible in almost every case.
Eric
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