[Numpy-discussion] packaging scipy (was Re: Simple financial functions for NumPy)

[Gael Varoquaux]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 10:16:22AM -0700, Timothy Hochberg wrote:
>    I prefer 'all' for this since it has the correct meaning. 'api' assuming
>    that one can remember what it means doesn't fit. The 'all' module would
>    not contain the api, at least not the preferred api (in my book at least),
>    but it would contain everything.

Sure, but everybody does it different. Convention are important,
especially in coding. See http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/sep-07/not-sucking
for a good argumentation about the point. I agree 100% with the author.
Especially the conclusion.

>    If "from numpy.all import *" is really too complicated, which although
>    possible, seems a little disheartening,

How much have you tried forcing Python on people who don't care at all
about computers. In my work we spend maybe 2% of our time dealing with
computers, and the rest struggling with electronics, optics, lasers,
mechanical design... People don't want to have to learn _anything_ about
computers. I am not saying they are right, I am however saying that we
need to provide easy entry point, from where they can evolve and learn.

>    I suspect it would be easy enough to have a separate module that
>    pulled everything in so that you could use "from big_numpy import
>    *". Or, to preserve backward compatibility, make numpy the unsplit
>    namespace and expose the split namespace under a different name,
>    let's say 'np' because that's what I already use as a numpy
>    abbreviation. 

That's the only solution I see wich would make everybody happy. IMHO the
pylab option is quite nice: matplotlib is nice and modular, but pylab has
it all. Use whichever you want.

Now the difficulty is to find a good name for the latter
module/namespace.

Cheers,

Gaël