[SciPy-User] Optimization, Matlab/Octave and Duplication

[David Cournapeau]

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 12:42 AM, Felipe Schneider
<schneider.felipe.5 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 2. Is there anything similar to Matlab's Toolboxes or Octave's
> Octave-Forge? Or is it all a huge pack?

There is nothing like octave-forge, but there is pypi which contains
a lot of software (not restricted to scientific packages).

>
> 3. I was searching for a LP solver and it seems SciPy doesn't have it!
> But there's cvxopt, am I wrong? So, there's no future plans on this
> area, I presume, i. e., no LP solver for SciPy? I would like to have a
> general answer (i. e., "when and when not should SciPy has this/that
> funtionality?"), which leads to my third question...
>
> 4. It seems that there are way more than one implemention in the
> Python world for a lot of things, am I wrong? How come? Why
> reinventing the wheel? Where does SciPy stand on this matter?

Python is an open platform, which means the barrier of entry is much
lower than most platforms like e.g. matlab or mathematica. Hence the
volume of packages is much larger than what you can see otherwise,
which contributes to this "NIH" feeling.

There is always a tension between openness and consistency. That being
said, when one package is significantly better than the other, it will
usually "win".

David