A beginner's question

[Madhusudan Singh]

On Sunday 16 February 2003 16:17, Manuel M. Garcia (mail at manuelmgarcia.com)  
held forth in comp.lang.python 
(<ubuv4v0r6u6tmu4185upkd9qc92lo0cn20 at 4ax.com>):

> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 15:08:15 -0500, Madhusudan Singh
> <spammers-go-here at yahoo.com> wrote:
> (edit)
>>        I do not have much time to invest in learning a new language that
>>        I
>> would probably not be using for any other purpose. Is there a tutorial th
>>at you folks are aware of, that I could put to use in learning the
>>relevant subset (if that means anything) of python ?
> 
> It is not unusual to be productive with Python during your first hours
> while you are still learning the language.
> 
> If you use Fortran for scientific/numerical analysis programming,
> another Python resource is 'Python and Scientific Computing':
> 
> http://www.python.org/topics/scicomp/
> 
> Manuel

Thanks for your response. I looked over the link above, and I daresay that 
it looks fairly impressive, but I am talking about *huge* programs with 
thousands of lines of code, that use libraries like NAG, ARPACK, IMSL, 
etc., that I and others have developed and validated over the years and it 
does not seem too clever to shift languages, especially with the added 
capabilities of F 95 and the forthcoming F2K. The number of 
scientific/numeric libraries available for Fortran seem to dwarf those 
available for any other language (and that includes C). Further, it is a 
matter of habit.

Just a matter of curiousity, how well does Python support threading (like 
HPF), etc. on multiprocessor systems ?

OTOH, scigraphica is a stand-alone application that (uses Numerical Python 
and pygtk2 for scripting) renders plots. The interactive mode of operation 
is impressive since it seems to be a near clone of Origin. However, I often 
have lots of plots that need similar processing, and thought that scripting 
like gnuplot might be more time-efficient. Hence my question.