Magic function

[Michael Tobis]

On Jan 11, 6:15 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> Your users are *scientists*, and you don't trust their intellectual
> ability to learn a programming language as simple as Python?
>
> Instead of spending time and effort writing, debugging  and maintaining
> such a fragile approach, why not invest in a couple of introductory books
> on Python programming and require your scientists to go through the first
> few chapters? Or write out a one-page "cheat sheet" showing them simple
> examples. Or, and probably most effectively, make sure all your classes
> have doc strings with lots of examples, and teach them how to use help().
>
> Some people problems are best dealt with by a technical solution, and
> some are not.
>
> --
> Steven

I am currently talking very similar trash on my blog, See
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/01/staying-geeky.html and
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-is-climate-modeling-stuck.html

You seem to think that learning the simple language is equivalent to
grasping the expressive power that the language provides.

Yes, users are scientists. Therefore they do not have the time or
interest to gain the depth of skill to identify the right abstractions
to do their work.

There are many abstractions that could be useful in science that are
currently provided with awkward libraries or messy one-off codes.

The idea that a scientist should be expected to be able to write
correct and useful Python is reasonable. I and the OP are relying on
it.

The idea that a scientist should be expected to identify and build
clever and elegant abstractions is not. If you think every scientist
can be a really good programmer you underestimate at least one of what
good scientists do or what good programmers do or what existing high
performance scientific codes are called upon to do.

mt