On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Gael Varoquaux < [email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 03:53:31PM -0500, Mark Wiebe wrote: > > concluded that adding masks to the core ndarray appears is the best > way to > > deal with the problem in general. > > It seems to me that this is going to make the numpy array a way more > complex object. Althought it is currently quite simple, that object has > already a hard time getting acceptance beyond the scientific community, > whereas it should really be used in many other places. > > Right now, the numpy array can be seen as an extension of the C array, > basically a pointer, a data type, and a shape (and strides). This enables > easy sharing with libraries that have not been written with numpy in > mind. > > The limitations of the subclassing approach that you mention do not seem > fundemental to me. For instance the impossibility to mix subclasses could > perhaps be solved using the Mixin Pattern. Urghh. Um, excuse me. > Ufuncs need work, but I have > the impression that your proposal is simply to solve the special case of > masked data in the ufunc by breaking the simple numpy array model. > > I wonder how much of the complication could be located in the dtype. > By moving in the core a growing amount of functionality, it seems to me > that you are going to make it more and more complex while loosing its > genericity. Each new feature will need to go in the core and induce a > high cost. Making inheritance and unfuncs more generic seems to me like a > better investment. > > Inheritance is an overused idea, mostly because it is misused to provide functionality. Mixins are another way to do the same but they have their own problems. Chuck
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