[PSF-Community] [gravitational-waves] A big thanks to the contributors in Python

[Steve Holden]

The world of academic science remains opaque to many in the computing
world, but I am happy to say that thanks to your good work and particularly
to the whole Software Carpentry initiative scientists are slowly opening
their eyed to good software engineering practices. The recent LIGO
publications are a testament not only to Python's readability and general
usefulness, but also to the work of the many scientific computing devotees
who have spent time making the Python ecosystem so usable and approachable.

Steve Holden

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 2:34 PM, C. Titus Brown <ctbrown at ucdavis.edu> wrote:

> I'm not sure how many people realize it, but Python (+ ipython/jupyter,
> pandas,
> matplotlib, scikit-learn, etc. etc.) has become one of the two mainstays of
> data analysis and visualization in the biological sciences -- along with R.
>
> Everyone should keep up the good work - the science crowd is doing its best
> to put it to good use :)
>
> cheers,
> --titus
>
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 01:32:33PM -0400, John Gill wrote:
> > Thanks for posting this.
> >
> > I am thrilled to hear that python has played such a key role in an
> > incredible piece of work.
> >
> > And I will second your thanks to John Hunter.
> >
> > Many years ago I was looking for some plotting software and stumbled on
> > matplotlib.  I sent off a patch for stacked bar plots.  A few hours
> > later I received an incredibly encouraging email that spurred me to make
> > more changes.  He was a delight to work.
> >
> > I remember him fondly every time a matplotlib plot renders.
> >
> > John
> >
> > Khaled Monsoor <k at kmonsoor.com> writes:
> >
> > > hello everyone in this wonderful community,
> > >
> > > probably, we already know about the recent confirmation by LIGO about
> existence of "gravitational waves", a major prediction by the "theory of
> > > relativity" by Albert Einstein. It is a huge milestone to human
> endeavour to understand nature.
> > >
> > > what we may or may not know that Python was the de-facto language of
> software components of the experimentation. It was extensively used in
> > > day-to-day operations, from orchestrating the instruments[1],
> gathering data, analytics, to generating the finally published pretty
> graphs[2].
> > > Usage of Python, IPython notebook & matplotlib was extensive among the
> team-members of LIGO.[3], [4]
> > >
> > > i am not a part of LIGO, or any of the member organisations.??
> > > Rather, as a common enthusiast of natural-sciences as well as a
> open-source believer, I would like to take a moment to thank every single
> > > contributor of Python. Please keep up pushing your commits.
> > > We facilitated something bigger than us.
> > >
> > > i would also like to take a moment to remember our lost friend, John
> D. Hunter, the creator of matplotlib. Whom we lost in 2012 in a battle with
> > > cancer. Dear John, you are long gone, but you will live generations
> through 2-D matplotlib plots.
> > >
> > > Thanks everyone.
> > >
> > > Khaled Monsoor,
> > > a common user of Python
> > >
> > > refs:
> > > [1]:
> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/45g8qu/we_are_the_ligo_scientific_collaboration_and_we/czxnlux
> > > [2]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ca8jlVIWcAUmeP8.png
> > > [3]: https://losc.ligo.org/s/events/GW150914/GW150914_tutorial.html
> > > [4]: https://github.com/ligo-cbc
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > PSF-Community mailing list
> > > PSF-Community at python.org
> > > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/psf-community
> > _______________________________________________
> > PSF-Community mailing list
> > PSF-Community at python.org
> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/psf-community
>
> --
> C. Titus Brown, ctbrown at ucdavis.edu
> _______________________________________________
> PSF-Community mailing list
> PSF-Community at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/psf-community
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/psf-community/attachments/20160216/89b3d056/attachment.html>