On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 3:55 AM, Stéfan van der Walt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Joe, all > > On 10/04/2008, Joe Harrington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Absolutely. Let's please standardize on: > > > import numpy as np > > > import scipy as sp > > > > I hope we do NOT standardize on these abbreviations. While a few may > > have discussed it at a sprint, it hasn't seen broad discussion Valid point... Travis did a wonderful job of summarizing that sprint and posting to the list. However, the N vs. np discussion was missed. http://projects.scipy.org/pipermail/scipy-dev/2007-December/008078.html > Namespaces throttle the amount of information with which the user is > presented, and well thought through design leads to logical, intuitive > segmentation of functionality. > > > Namespaces add characters to code that have a high redundancy factor. > > This means they pollute code, make it slow and inaccurate to read, and > > making learning harder. Lines get longer and may wrap if they contain > > several calls. It is harder while visually scanning code to > > distinguish the function name if it's adjacent to a bunch of other > > text, particularly if that text appears commonly in the nearby code. I think namespaces are one of the crown-jewels that make python more attractive to scientists (not programmers) over Matlab. Even if they don't realize it yet. :) I think a lot of researchers would spend less time debugging their code if they were using python with namespaces instead of adding this: addpath(genpath('mydirectory')) in all of their Matlab code! Or other path manipulation. We certainly need a better discover mechanism for users to find functions however. -- Christopher Burns Computational Infrastructure for Research Labs 10 Giannini Hall, UC Berkeley phone: 510.643.4014 http://cirl.berkeley.edu/
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