[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Data analysis package question

[Konrad Hinsen]

> Meanwhile, I'm keeping myself busy fending off periodic assaults from
> friends saying that I should just use either IDL or C and be done with it. 
> My CS friends think perl is the answer to all problems.  IDL's great, but

If you want yet another opinion: use Python and be done with it ;-)

Seriously, all such suggestions make sense only for a specific set of
problems to be solved. There is no one and only tool that will make
everyone happy. Python + NumPy + the occasional module written in C
have proven to be the best solution for my needs, but your mileage
may vary.

> would take a zillion lines of code to do anything interesting.  I'm just
> not understood.  Sigh.  :)

You should consider yourself lucky. I have to fight against people who
think that *Fortran* is the sole path to hapiness! ;-)

> (I am somewhat disturbed by reports that perl is several times faster 
> than python, though.)

When seeing such a report, your immediate question should be: for what?
Languages like Python and Perl tend to be fast for the purposes that
are supported by special low-level modules (written in C), but can be
slow for anything else. For array-based number crunching, for example,
Python's overall speed is almost irrelevant; all that counts is the
speed of the NumPy extension.
-- 
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Konrad Hinsen                          | E-Mail: hinsen@ibs.ibs.fr
Laboratoire de Dynamique Moleculaire   | Tel.: +33-76.88.99.28
Institut de Biologie Structurale       | Fax:  +33-76.88.54.94
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