Python in sci/tech applications

[Paul Boddie]

mattf wrote:
> I'd like to mention a few things I've run across that have either surprised me or kept me
> from doing things the way I'd like to.
>
> 1) -There's a large and active sci/tech Python community out there.-
> This was something of a surprise. If you look at the python.org site
> and click down a couple of levels past the front page, there's a rather
> brief mention of scientific and numeric applications-- but I don't
> think this does justice to the current levels of activity and
> accomplishment.

If you want an in-depth impression of how widely Python is used,
python.org is not really the place that manages to provide it. Sure,
"NASA uses Python" (appropriate response: dressed in a flight suit,
leap up and punch the air?) but isn't OLPC (One Laptop per Child:
http://www.laptop.org/) worth a mention, given the central role of
Python in a device that will potentially reach millions? To the site's
credit, the link to scientific and numeric applications does yield a
lot of information, and I suppose it's hard to focus the site on any
one thing that any given group considers of utmost importance.

However, I think you're going to find that the python.org worldview can
be somewhat alien, especially if your primary interest isn't Python
(the language). To take another domain as an example, if you do desktop
development, the treatment of graphical user interface programming on
the site is quite possibly going to be completely disaligned with what
you'd expect: Python is used extensively in various desktop
environments (not that you'd get that impression from a cursory
examination of python.org), but the python.org (or comp.lang.python)
worldview mostly excludes such things as if the desktop is something
you abstract away rather than take advantage of.

And on the subject of how well "core Pythoneers" know of Python's
successes: how many people knew that Python was used in the OLPC device
before Alan Kay mentioned it at EuroPython? It's hard to promote Python
when you don't know where it's being successfully used already.

> 2) -There's a very impressive set of libraries out there-
> NumPy, SciPy, Enthought. It's really kind of stunning how mature these
> libraries are and how much I had to poke around to figure that out.

I guess a lot of the poking around comes about because people are
reluctant to provide any semi-official guide to the best libraries, and
that the most promotion occurs for the most fashionable products in the
most fashionable domains. Some of us have tried to provide better
information about libraries for Python, but such details remain
relatively hidden in the python.org Wiki:

http://wiki.python.org/moin/UsefulModules

With respect to content on python.org, I think all that remains is an
acknowledgement that certain resources are never going to return to
their original vitality, and that alternative mechanisms for publishing
content are required. For example, the XML topic guide surely hasn't
seen many updates in a very long time, and despite a reasonable level
of maintenance, the database topic guide could surely be more actively
maintained by aggregating package information from the package index.

Paul