Matt,
Yes, I agree. I wasn't coming at so much from the goal of making Pylab
a Matlab clone (as you point out, that's silly, and misses much of the
advantage of Python), but rather from the goal of making interactive
use as efficient as possible. When I fire up ipython -pylab to do some
quick exploration, it's nice not to have to type N.blah or pylab.plot
etc. If I just import pylab *, however, then the commands I use may
not be what I expect from more formal coding where I use N.blah numpy,
S.foo for scipy, and pylab.bar for matplotlib. Making it easy for
users to have either namespace strategy, with consistent bindings, ala
the start of this thread is a good idea, IMO.
Well, I've said my piece. I'll get out of the way and let others have a crack...
Barry
On 2/18/07, Matthew Brett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > import plab
> >
> > plab.plot() #etc.
> >
> > and interactive use could do from plab import *.
>
> Yes... It's a hard call of course. I am a long term matlab user, and
> switched to python relatively recently. I do see the attraction of
> persuading people that you can get something very similar to matlab
> easily. The downside about making numpy / python like matlab is that
> you soon realize that you really have to think about your problems
> differently, and write code in a different way. I know that's
> obvious, but the variables as pointers, mutable / immutable types,
> zero based indexing, arrays vs matrices are all (fruitful) stumbling
> blocks. Then there is the very large change of thinking in an OO way,
> pulling in other large packages for doing other tasks, writing
> well-structured code with tests - all the features that python gives
> you for an industrial strength code base. And, the more pylab looks
> like matlab, the more surprised and confused people will be when they
> switch. So, I would argue that getting as close to matlab as
> possible should not be the unqualified goal here - it is a real
> change, with real pain, but great benefits.
>
> Best,
>
> Matthew
>
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