Posts from 2017-11
Stability in the SciPy ecosystem: a summary of the discussion
The plea for stability in the SciPy ecosystem that I posted last week on this blog has generated a lot of feedback, both as comments and in a lengthy Twitter thread. For the benefit of people discovering it late, here is a summary of the main arguments and my reply to them.
A plea for stability in the SciPy ecosystem
Two NumPy-related news items appeared on my Twitter feed yesterday, just a few days after I had accidentally started a somewhat heated debate myself concerning the poor reproducibility of Python-based computer-aided research. The first was the announcement of a plan for dropping support for Python 2. The second was a pointer to a recent presentation by Nathaniel Smith entitled "Inside NumPy" and dealing mainly with the NumPy team's plans for the near future. Lots of material to think about... and comment on.
There is no such thing as software development
It's hard to find an aspect of modern life that is not influenced in some way by software. Some of it is very visible, for example the Web browser I start on my computer. Other software is completely invisible, such as the software controlling my car's diesel engine. Some software is safety critical, for example flight control software in airplanes. Other software is used in a much more futile way, such as playing games. I could go on listing characteristics in which different software packages differ, but I will leave it at that - I don't really expect anyone to disagree about the ubiquity and diversity of software in our increasingly digital world.
Tags: computational science, computer-aided research, emacs, mmtk, mobile computing, programming, proteins, python, rants, reproducible research, science, scientific computing, scientific software, social networks, software, source code repositories, sustainable software
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