why python for the academe?

[Cameron Laird]

In article <3C947318.B0E80317 at kfunigraz.ac.at>,
Siegfried Gonzi  <siegfried.gonzi at kfunigraz.ac.at> wrote:
>huck wrote:
>> 
>> hello all,
>> 
>> i've been lurking for a while and am amused at how
>> many people in the list here use python for scientific
>> computing. why not matlab (or octave or scilab or whatever)?
			.
		[lots of points I'll
		leave to stand on
		their own]
			.
			.
>Python with the right combination (numerical libraries and plotting
>libraries) is much more flexible than lets say Matlab or IDL. What you
>buy with Matlab is a huge repository of pre-compiled code. Scientist
>normally do not get paid for programming (curiosity: but they do
>programming  all the time) and a great many are not very well educated
>how to glue together libraries. Personally, I switched to Windows (even
			.
			.
			.
>buy my study and not expect to get it for free. Free software is not all
>that good as a great many of people want to make believe us.
>
>S. Gonzi

Commercial software is not as good as its marketers
try to make people believe.  Software generally is
... of limited quality.

Yes, people on this list-newsgroup use Python to do
scientific programming.  If comp.lang.awk can discuss
matrix inversion in awk ...!

Mr. Gonzi's characterization is apt.  While Matlab's
rather wonderful stuff, it's not designed as a pro-
gramming system.  It offers lots of "canned stuff",
but isn't satisfying as a programming language.
Abstraction of Matlab applications is obscure. 
Python is a beautiful programming language, and sup-
ports far more sophisticated design.

Python also "glues" better.
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html