[Numpy-discussion] the direction and pace of development

[Konrad Hinsen]

On Wednesday 21 January 2004 22:28, Perry Greenfield wrote:

> contributed code as well). You have to remember that how easily
> contributions come depends on what the critical mass is for
> usefulness. For something like numarray or Numeric, that critical
> mass is quite large. Few are interested in contributing when it
> can do very little and and older package exists that can do more.

I also find it difficult in practice to move code from Numeric to Numarray. 
While the two packages coexist peacefully, any C module that depends on the C 
API must be compiled for one or the other. Having both available for 
comparative testing thus means having two separate Python installations. And 
even with two installations, there is only one PYTHONPATH setting, which 
makes development under these conditions quite a pain.

If someone has found a way out of that, please tell me!

> many times in the past. Often consensus was hard to achieve.
> We tended to lean towards backward compatibilty unless the change
> seemed really necessary. For type coercion and error handling,
> we thought it was. But I don't think we have tried shield the
> decision making process from the community. I do think the difficulty
> in achieving a sense of consensus is a problem.

I think you did well on this - but then, I happen to share your general 
philosophy ;-)

Konrad.
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