On 10/08/2015 21:43, E.D.G. wrote:
<rogerh...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:d6a3dfe4-8389-463b-ac66-a93f14a91...@googlegroups.com...
Just learning Python and have a question.
Other important resources would be the ability to perform rapid
calculations and the ability to generate plots that could display on the
screen and also be saved as .png files etc.
numpy and matplotlib are the leaders here.
The language also has to have the ability to be "cloned." That
means that it could be stored in some directory that could be copied
from one computer to another. And programs written with that language
would then run on the new computer. One person responding to my own
earlier post stated that this is possible with Python.
Certainly. In your position I think the easiest option is to have
Python installed on all your machines and simply copy your programs aka
scripts from machine to machine. I suppose it all depends on how easy
it is to bribe your admin people!!!
Python apparently also provides all of the necessary resources.
And as all of these posts demonstrate, it has the major advantage in
that when a question gets asked in the Python newsgroup, there is
usually an answer.
No "usually" about it :)
I needed a program that could generate data regarding the
locations of the sun and the moon in the sky in response to specific
times entered. Roger developed the basic equations with some help from
another researcher. And that took a while. But it probably took a full
six months for us to compare notes by E-mail and get the program into a
final form that people could download for free use.
That is just too much time. Researchers need to be able to do
things such as create simple charts etc. without spending months or
years learning some programming language or comparing notes with one
another. So, an entire Python directory that made that possible and
that had clear instructions for how to open and close files and create
"pipes" etc. would get the job done.
http://ipython.org/notebook.html could be what you're looking for here,
both for your collaboration rather than comparing notes by email, and
for actually producing your output.
If Roger wants to use Python then we might use the ActiveState
version and then build those various resources into it. It reportedly
installs in a Windows environment without problems. And I myself have
used the ActiveState versions of Perl for quite a few years with a
considerable amount of success.
This assumes that the ActiveState version of Python can be taught
to do fast calculations and to generate charts. If that does not look
possible or easy then we will probably try one of the available
scientific versions of Python.
Anaconda always comes up in this area, with numpy, ipython and
matplotlib included in the distibution, see
http://docs.continuum.io/anaconda/index
Would researchers then put professional Python programmers "out
of business?"
No, they'll work perfectly happily side by side.
If you're not already aware then scipy http://www.scipy.org/ should be
pointed out, as well as pypi https://pypi.python.org/pypi which
currently holds 64383 packages. Heck, I almost forgot pythonlibs
http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ which is a godsend if you
haven't got Visual Studio and don't want to install it.
--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.
Mark Lawrence
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
