Robert Kern wrote: > And you need to ask why Python is a better Matlab than Matlab?
First there are a few things I don't like: 1. Intendation as a part of the syntax, really annoying. 2. The "self.something" syntax is really tedious (look to ruby)! 4. Multithreading and parallel execution is impossible AFAIK because of the so-called GIL (global interpreter lock). Matlab is perhaps even worse in this respect. 5. I don't like numpy's array slicing. Array operations should be a part of the language, as in Matlab, Fortran 90, Ada 95, D, Octave. And there is a couple of questions I need answered: 1. Can python do "pass by reference"? Are datastructures represented by references as in Java (I don't know yet). 2. How good is matplotlib/pylab? I tried to install it but only get error messages so I haven't tested it. But plotting capabilities is really major issue. 3. Speed. I haven't seen any performance benchmarks that actually deals with things that are important for scientific programs. 4. Are there "easy to use" libraries containing other stuff important for scientific programs, e.q. linear algebra (LU, SVD, Cholesky), Fourier transforms, etc. E.g. in Matlab I can just type, [u,s,v] = svd(x) % which calls LAPACK linked to ATLAS or vendor-optimized BLAS Even though the language itself is very limited this type of library functionality more than makes up for it. I have looked for alternatives to Matlab for quite a while, mainly due to the cost, the åpoor speed and poor memory management. I am not sure it is Python but so far I have not found anything mor promising either. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
