[Numpy-discussion] What's wrong with matrices?

[Sven Schreiber]

Ed Schofield schrieb:

> 
> Okay ... <Ed rolls up his sleeves> ... let's make this the thread ;) 
> I'd like to know why you, Sven, and anyone else on the list have gone
> back to using arrays after trying matrices.  What was inconvenient about
> them?  I'd like a nice juicy list.  The whole purpose of the matrix
> class is to simplify 2d linear algebra.  Where is it failing?

No, no, I must have given the wrong impression, I'm still in the matrix
camp. My main complaint would have been absence of equivalents for ones,
zeros, etc., but it seems Travis has introduced numpy.matlib exactly for
that, which is great. Before that, I sometimes felt like a second-class
citizen because many people on the list argued that users should invent
their own workarounds (which btw I have done in the meantime, but that's
not the purpose of a ready-to-use matrix package, is it?).

> 
> I'd like to help to make matrices more usable.  Tell me what you want,
> and I'll work on some patches.
> 

Well if numpy.matlib does what I think it does there are no pressing
issues for me right now. Element-wise multiplication isn't that
important for me.

Of course I'll let you know as soon as something occurs to me ;-)

Thanks for offering,
Sven