switching to numpy and failing, a user story

[Istvan Albert]

Fernando Perez wrote:

> It's funny how I don't see anyone complaining about any of the Python books
> sold here (or at any other publishing house):

That is maybe because the language is fairly well documented to begin
with. Try to imagine for a moment how many people would use Python if
on the first page of documentation you'd see a link sending you to buy
the book...

No one is questioning one's right to try to sell a product/book etc.
But I happen to believe that trying to make money by selling the docs
is stupid, you'll scare away potential users, hinder the acceptance of
the product, further fragment the community of users needing such
functionality. Once I hit the page asking me to pay even before telling
me what NumPy does, I went back to Numeric. Even now I can't tell in
what way is NumPy different from Numeric or Numarray  (I understand
that implementation wise it is different).

In the past I have donated to several open source projects (and
individual developers) whose work saved me a lot of time, I don't mind
the cost of it. But I just can't see doing the same in a "pay it
forward" fashion.

I wish the author all the best, with the remark that in this day and
age with the pervasive need for large scale management/analysis he
would/could make a lot more money by fostering relationships with
research groups (private/university)  and selling his scientific
computing (support) expertise rather then a pdf file.

That's all.