[Numpy-discussion] defining a NumPy API standard?

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Sat, Jun 1, 2019 at 11:59 PM Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 2, 2019 at 12:35 AM Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 1, 2019 at 1:05 PM Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I think this is potentially useful, but *far* more prescriptive and detailed than I had in mind. Both you and Nathaniel seem to have not understood what I mean by "out of scope", so I think that's my fault in not being explicit enough. I *do not* want to prescribe behavior. Instead, a simple yes/no for each function in numpy and method on ndarray.
>>
>> So yes/no are the answers. But what's the question?
>>
>> "If we were redesigning numpy in a fantasy world without external
>> constraints or compatibility issues, would we include this function?"
>> "Is this function well designed?"
>> "Do we think that supporting this function is necessary to achieve
>> practical duck-array compatibility?"
>> "If someone implements this function, should we give them a 'numpy
>> core compliant!' logo to put on their website?"
>> "Do we recommend that people use this function in new code?"
>> "If we were trying to design a minimal set of primitives and implement
>> the rest of numpy in terms of them, then is this function a good
>> candidate for a primitive?"
>>
>> These are all really different things, and useful for solving
>> different problems... I feel like you might be lumping them together
>> some?
>
>
> No, I feel like you just want to see a real proposal. At this point I've gotten some really useful feedback, in particular from Marten (thanks!), and I have a better idea of what to do. So I'll answer a few of your questions, and propose to leave the rest till I actually have some more solid to discuss. That will likely answer many of your questions.

Okay, that's fine. You scared me a bit with the initial email, but I
really am trying to be helpful :-). I'm not looking for a detailed
proposal; I'm just super confused right now about what you're trying
to accomplish or how this table of yes/no values will help do it.  I
look forward to hearing more!

>> I'm seeing this as a living document (a NEP?)
>
> NEP would work. Although I'd prefer a way to be able to reference some fixed version of it rather than it being always in flux.

When I say "living" I mean: it would be seen as documenting our
consensus and necessarily fuzzy rather than normative and precise like
most NEPs. Maybe this is obvious and not worth mentioning. But I
wouldn't expect it to change rapidly. Unless our collective opinions
change rapidly I guess, but that seems unlikely.

(And of course NEPs are in git so we always have the ability to link
to a point-in-time snapshot if we need to reference something.)

-n

-- 
Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org