On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 1:42 AM, Maurizio <maurizio.gran...@gmail.com> wrote: > I just spend a couple of words about IDEs. I've personally spent a > decent amount of time on Spyder and Eric, and my impressions are: > - Eric is very well suited for general software development, it is not > completely polished, and it lacks (at least explicitly, I didn't get > those) useful features for scientific computing (which I'll later > mention) > - Spyder is theoretically exactly what I was looking for: it is a > pythonized version of the Matlab GUI, which I felt very comfortable to > use; nonetheless, the problems are there: > 1) I find it very slow (even if I may have problems with matplotblib, > my workstation is quad-core and generally fast), certainly slower than > Eric (I think both are written in Python) > 2) window management is awful: if you undock an internal subwindow, > you are forced to not move it again within the area of the main Spyder > window, otherwise it immediately redocks it > 3) integrated plot management looks pretty, but (it's entirely not > Spyder's fault) matplotlib just outputs pictures, so plot navigation > is still orders of magnitude less evolved than Matlab's (I know it may > sound silly, but is that so difficult to do something better??) > on the pros side I count: > 1) both internal and external console: the former one is useful to do > experiments within the script you are editing, the latter is better to > have a clean environment > 2) variables management and browsing > 3) enhanced editing (code completion, syntax highlighting, classes > identification and browsing)
Very interesting. 1. How does the speed of the Sage notebook running locally on your computer compare to Spyder locally on your computer? 2. Are the plotting issues you mention the result of Spyder embedding static png images (like the sage notebook does) or something more subtle. The sage notebook might switch to HTML5 canvas rendering soon.... I say might, because after having tried it a bunch, I'm seriously concerned that HTML5 canvas matplotlib is slow -- surprisingly, maybe much slower than using png's and image maps, which we should have at least enabled long ago. 3. I have talked with people about making a Matlab-clone-ish version of the Sage notebook. This would be web-based, but instead of feeling Mathematica-like, it would feel much more Matlab-like. Thoughts? > > I don't know what about outside Europe, but I find so strange that > SAGE is unknown in scientific community, I find it very useful (from > an engineering point of view), and I personally think that may be a > perfect solution to be introduced inside universities at first (thanks > to the wonderful internet-based notebook system). I was also very surprised. But it is simply a fact I observed. Well, it wasn't so much that Sage is *unknown* -- many people knew about it. What I noticed at Euroscipy is that very few of the people there used Sage. Not a single speaker (except me) said they used Sage, and there were nearly about speakers (including lightning talks). > The problem I see now regarding scientific computing, is the not so > seamless integration of numpy-scipy: do you think SAGE may improve > numpy arrays management with cleaner syntax than regular python? I > know you are usually against introducing syntax that is unacceptable > in standard python, but I think that allowing users to avoid writing > "np.array()" to do any kind of vector manipulation would be highly > appreciated! Yes, this is definitely a Sage goal. I talked a lot about this goal with Dag last weekend (he's one of the lead Cython developers). > I strongly support SAGE for science!! :) Thanks. > By the way (not completely off-topic) a colleague of mine is having > some troubles in working with scipy.optimize within SAGE, but I have > no details right now... I should better check! Yep, report it. > > My 2 cents > > Thanks > > Maurizio > > > On 11 Lug, 20:41, Ondrej Certik <ond...@certik.cz> wrote: >> On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 3:20 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > Hi, >> >> > 1. IDE's >> > There are a number of IDEs that can be used for Python development: >> >> > * Spyder (free, cross platform) --http://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/ >> > * Eric (free, cross platform) --http://eric-ide.python-projects.org/ >> > * PyDev + Eclipse or Aptana (free, cross platform) --http://pydev.org/ >> > * Wing IDE (non free, but has a 30-day trial) --http://www.wingware.com/ >> > * XCode (free, closed, OS X only) >> >> > I'm at EuroScipy and many of the scientists and engineers giving talks >> > mention some of these IDE's (especially Spyder). It would be of >> > interest to make a page athttp://wiki.sagemath.orgabout each of the >> > above IDE's in the context of Sage. Which can be used with Sage? >> > How? Do they work on anything but Linux, etc. Any volunteers? This >> > could be a good student project (so possibly some funding for >> > something at UW). >> >> > 2. Sage at EuroScipy: >> >> > Another thing -- though most talks mention Cython, not one single talk >> > given about actual engineers/scientists doing work even mentioned Sage >> > -- and there were over 30 talks. Perhaps there is no penetration at >> > all of Sage into scientific computing, at least in Europe. Perhaps >> > this will change in the next few years, given that NSF looks highly >> > likely to fund this NSF granthttp://wstein.org/grants/compmath09/ >> >> > Sage was only mentioned in the first keynote by Langtangen, in which >> > he explained that installing Python for his students is very hard. >> > His personal solution -- force the students to install Ubuntu, either >> > natively or in a Virtual Machine. Full stop. >> >http://picasaweb.google.com/wstein/20100710EuroscipyDay1#549240022431... >> > He made some (funny) jokes about being a dictator. >> >> > I personally disagree with his suggested "solution". Maple, Matlab, >> > Mathematica do better, and so can we. >> >> Yeah, definitely. I am now working at the Lawrence Livermore National >> Lab during the summer and I don't have a root access to my computer, >> and it is not running Ubuntu. So his solution would be a complete >> failure for me. >> >> I am running our latest git femhub:http://femhub.org/and that >> creates me a nice environment, and I use "femhub --shell", which is >> like "sage -sh", except that the prompt looks better: >> >> FEMhub: ond...@raven:~/repos/hermes1d(master)$ >> >> Here are the packages that are in femhub: >> >> http://femhub.org/codes.php >> >> At least for me, it's now doing exactly what I need. >> >> Another problem is with gui ---- I couldn't get any working for >> matplotlib. So I would like to get the html5 canvas working for >> matplotlib. >> >> Also I would like to have some easy way to create guis, it should run >> in the browser. Using extjs:http://www.sencha.com/products/js/, but >> I'd like to somehow write it in Python, so that I don't have to mess >> up with javascript. >> >> Ondrej > > -- > 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 > -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- 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
