There is a range of folks doing scientific programming. Not all of them are described correctly by your summary, but many are. The article is aimed not at them, but rather at institutions that develop engineered Fortran models using multipuurpose teams and formal methods. I appreciate your comments, because I see that there should be another article aimed at desktop programmers.
One of the things python addresses best is the division of labor, where the subtle concepts are available to those who need them and hidden from those who don't need them. From what I understand of your work (and what I have seen of the work of two other neuroscientists, actually) Python would be a good choice for you. That said, the level of computational skill in many scientists is alarming. Why do we expect to spend six semesters learning mathematics and expect to pick up computing "on the side"? It baffles me. Frankly, saying "I don't need version control" sounds to me no less foolish than saying "I don't need logarithms". (Perhaps you don't but someday soon you will.) "Speed of excecution is an issue, regardless of what computer science folks try to tell you." strikes me as nothing short of hallucinatory. No informed person says that speed is never an issue, and a great deal of effort is spent on speed. Where do you suppose your Fortran compiler came from in the first place? For someone without legacy code to worry about, fussing with Fortran for single-user one-off codes strikes me as a weak choice. If you are hitting Matlab's performance or memory limits, you should take the time to learn something about computation, not because you are idle, but because you are busy. Or if you prefer, because your competitors will be learning how to be more productive while you put all your efforts into coping with crude tools. The peculiar lack of communication between computer scientists and application scientists is real; but I believe the fault is not all on one side. The fact that you have a PhD does not prove that you know everything you need to know, and I strongly recommend you reconsider this attitude. For one thing, you misjudged which side of the divide I started on. Michael Tobis (While I dislike credentialism on usenet, I will reply in kind. I hold a Ph.D. in geophysical fluid dynamics.) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list