Personally I don't mind that the syntax is different. I was about to give some examples of indexing and slicing of Numpy arrays, which I remembered to be odd for matrices, but then I realized that the indexing/slicing works exactly like I expect it to, e.g.,
>>> A[:, i] picks out the i'th column. Has this always been the case with Numpy? If that's the case, some of my objections against Numpy are based on my own ignorance. On Aug 19, 9:55 am, "Johan S. R. Nielsen" <j.s.r.niel...@mat.dtu.dk> wrote: > > Seems this thread *has* been hijacked. ;-) > > Just want to add my opinion, which belongs in some void between the > original thread and the hijacked one ;-) > > I am a ph.d. student in algebra, but have a background in computer > science. I don't do much numerics anymore, so I'm not exactly the > right person to ask, but I do hang around with a lot of numerics > people. So far, I agree with some of the very insightful comments on > the problems with working numerically in Sage *once you got the > matrices* that has come up (like the posts from Jordi Hermoso, Chris > Godsil and Tim Lahey). > > However, I really don't believe that the current matrix-construction > syntax is what is seriously keeping Matlab people away from Sage -- > and if it is, then that's simply silly! Comparing > > M = [1 2; > 3 4; > 5 6] > > with > > M = matrix(RR,2,3,[ > 1, 2, > 3, 4, > 5, 6 ]) > > that's a very small syntax price to pay for 1) unambiguous, > straightforward syntax 2) complete control of element space. I always > disliked Matlab for its happy-go-lucky, ambiguous syntax, and I think > it is unnecessary to make specialised, ad-hoc syntax in Sage for (2D) > matrices (over X-bit floats). > > My impression from my own math department is that a lot of Matlab > users know more or less only Matlab as a programming language, and > that they have always used this, and their advisor also used/s this. > They have the opinion that it is really difficult to learn a new > language, and will dislike *any* difference between Matlab and > "Alternative X", no matter how minute (much like Jordi mentioned > earlier). I think it would be silly to start introducing Matlab syntax > and renaming functions to look as much as possible like Matlab for > this reason. The ex-Matlab users would not stop complaining until Sage > was a completely compatible superset of Matlab anyway. > > On the other hand, I think it would of course think it would be great > if all functionality needed for numerics people would be readily > available in Sage. Though not at the expense of a dichotomised syntax > and namespace to cater for Matlab devotees. In time, I think this > would make people migrate to Sage because of expense, ideology and > functionality. > > Cheers, > Johan S. R. Nielsen -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
