[Numpy-discussion] Created NumPy 1.7.x branch

[Thouis (Ray) Jones]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 5:14 AM, Charles R Harris
<charlesr.harris at gmail.com> wrote:
> What has been done in the past is that an intent to fork is announced some
> two weeks in advance so that people can weigh in on what needs to be done
> before the fork. The immediate fork was a bit hasty. Likewise, when I
> suggested going to the github issue tracking, I opened a discussion on
> needed tags, but voila, there it was with an incomplete set and no
> discussion. That to seemed hasty.

I don't have a particular dog in this fight, but it seems like neither
creating the fork nor turning on issues are worth disagreeing to much
about.  There's going to be a 1.7 fork sometime soon, and whether it
gets created now or after discussion seems mostly academic.  Even if
there were changes that needed to go into both branches, git makes
that straightforward.  Likewise github issues.  Turning them on has
minimal cost, especially given that pull requests already go through
github, and gives another route for bug reporting and a way to
experiment with issues to inform the discussion.

> [...]
> Most folks aren't going to transition from MATLAB or IDL. Engineers tend to
> stick with the tools they learned in school, they aren't interested in the
> tool itself as long as they can get their job done. And getting the job done
> is what they are paid for. That said, I doubt they would have much problem
> making the adjustment if they were inclined to switch tools.
> [...]

My own experience is the opposite.  Most programmers/engineers I've
worked with are happy to transition away from Matlab, but part of why
they're willing to is that it's not that difficult to retarget Matlab
knowledge onto numpy/scipy/matplotlib knowledge.  Making that
transition as easy as possible (as I think matplotlib does
particularly well) is a good goal.  I agree that getting the job done
is what they're paid for, but python/numpy/scipy/matplotlib allow them
to get that job done much faster and more easily.

Ray Jones