[Edu-sig] PyGeo

[kirby urner]

These are excellent questions Kevin.

Arthur was an extraordinarily bright and committed guy and took his
winnings in financial services to fund a long sabbatical studying what
really most interested him:  projective geometry.  He really admired
Klein.

Those mining the archives may think Arthur and I were enemies but we
were actually sparring partners and liked testing each other.  I met
him a few times, twice in New York City and I think once at a Pycon.

Anyway, given he was largely self taught in a lot of ways, I expect
his quirky genius is manifest in the code.  He wanted people to study
his source and wrote it with that in mind.  He felt that precisely
because he'd clawed his way through this knowledge on his own, that he
had valuable perspectives and people might get some value following in
his footsteps, if only to see where he might have gone wrong (and I'm
suggesting this is likely true).

In the years since Arthur's death yours is the first email across my
radar with anything close to this high a level of curiosity about
Pygeo.  In other words, I am aware of no developments since he left
off working on it himself.  If you wanted to make that a niche and try
to recruit more talent to continuing this work, I have no reason to
think you'd have competition at this point.

Both Python and Visual Python have continued to evolve.  In particular
I'm away that VPython is now working better with wxPython than ever
before, at least on Windows.  Arthur always thought highly of Visual
(which meant he was confrontational with its developers), and thought
everyone under-appreciated its great worth to Python.  Blender is so
difficult, relatively speaking.

Those are my initial thoughts.  Arthur would be delighted, I think, to
have his code carried forward in some way.

Kirby


On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Kevin <ipythonstudent at eml.cc> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I'm new to python and super-excited about using it for all sorts of
> reasons including education (especially math education). I've been
> reading a great deal on the subject, and I discovered some of Kirby's
> resources at http://4dsolutions.net/ocn/cp4e.html which have been very
> helpful. I was especially intrigued by the very simple Euclid's
> algorithm that he showed in the python for math teachers videos at
> http://showmedo.com/videotutorials/series?name=JkD78HdCD
>
> I'm also very interested in VPython and PyGeo. I read a fair amount of
> background on PyGeo including the sad news of Arthur's passing in 2007.
> And I've searched the web for news on the current status of PyGeo since
> Arthur passed, and have found very little
> <http://osdir.com/ml/python.visualpython.user/2007-02/msg00013.html>.
>
> Can anyone give me any better insights on the state of the PyGeo code
> base? From http://pygeo.sourceforge.net/ it looks like the last revision
> to the PyGeo code base was 7 years ago, but perhaps someone here knows
> of more recent developments with PyGeo?
>
> With all the changes that have taken place since 2007, does anyone know
> if I should expect that PyGeo will still work ok with Python 2.7 or
> Python 3.2?
>
> Also, has anyone shown any interest in continuing to develop PyGeo?
> Although I'm very new and still have a lot to learn, Arthur sounds like
> he was a man after my own heart, and I suspect that I would enjoy trying
> to pick up his PyGeo work where he left off if nobody else has done so.
> I probably will not be able (skill-wise) to improve upon his work in the
> next year or so, but I can't help thinking it might be feasible for me
> after that.
>
> I'd welcome reading any thoughts on these or related issues via private
> email or public list follow-up.
>
> Thanks everyone.
>
> -Kevin
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