Python advocacy in scientific computation

[Pauli Virtanen]

Michael Tobis wrote:

> 3) speed
> 
> Speed matters less in Python than in other languages because Python
> plays so well with others. For many applications, NumPy is fine.
> Otherwise write your own C or C++ or F77; building the Python bindings
> is trivial. (F9* is problematic, though in fact we do some calling of
> F90 from Python using the Babel toolkit)

I have met no problems using F90 together with f2py -- in fact usually it
can bind f90 code to python completely automatically with no need to write
extra glue code.

The only problem was setting up Intel Fortran compiler and making it play
along with f2py, but I suppose the compiler business will become easier
when gfortran matures.

-- 
Pauli Virtanen