Slashdot Mirror

+1 Python

Install the following on whatever you get (there is a free version):
https://www.enthought.com/prod...

From calculus to visualization and web tools.

Check out Enthought's Python package, it includes amazing 3D visualization (on par with Matlab or superior, I think), the IDE you like from Matlab, good support, good documentation, etc. I don't think that Matlab has much advantage except for certain application-specific software that has just happened to be designed to interoperate with Matlab.

The Enthought pricing page: http://www.enthought.com/products/epd_sublevels.php
(But note that you can get most of the functionality of the software for free, just you mentioned paying for support as an advantage of Matlab.)

That echoes my experience. I generally prefer Chaco for plots in Python since it seems to handle large datasets better than matplotlib (although matplotlib seems more functional), but matplotlib is comfortable for MATLAB users. I'm working on a SciPy project with a couple of MATLAB refugees and they love matplotlib.

That's very kind....makes my day.... There was also Ada Lovelace on the other side of the card...... Tech details... Ubuntu, python http://www.python.org/ enthought http://code.enthought.com/ opencv http://opencv.willowgarage.com/ yarp http://eris.liralab.it/yarp/ KDL http://www.orocos.org/kdl Gamera http://gamera.sourceforge.net/ Shapely http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Shapely/ few other bits and pieces Hardware: Dell xps13, Intel atom motherboards, 1gig ram, 4gig usb thumb drive, and wifi dongle, router... Arduinos, philips webcam, low cost micro servos, AX12 Bioloids servos, USB2Dynamixel, ikea lights and tables...that's about it..pen and paper...

All of these libraries are also include in Enthought's python distribution called EPD. While it is a commercial product, it is free for commercial use and there is also a 30-day free trial for anyone. EPD is available on platforms Python(x,y) doesn't cover.

There is at least one such distro already.

> What the community needs right now is a Python distro with enough of a
> numerics and graphics package rolled in to do 90 percent of what is in
> Matlab.

Good idea. This is what both Sage and the Enthought Python Distribution are
shooting for.

> (Are the Python people still hashing out that Numerics/Numpy divide?

No that is done. And the lead developer of Numpy -- Travis Oliphant --
now gets to work full time on Python scientific computing, as an
employee of Enthought.

> Is there an engineering graphics library that is Numerics/Numpy compatible?

There is Matplotlib for
matlab like numpy graphics, and Chaco for more dynamic 2d graphics. MayaVi and Sage both provide powerful 3d graphics.

> What the community needs right now is a Python distro with enough of a
> numerics and graphics package rolled in to do 90 percent of what is in
> Matlab.

Good idea. This is what both Sage and the Enthought Python Distribution are
shooting for.

> (Are the Python people still hashing out that Numerics/Numpy divide?

No that is done. And the lead developer of Numpy -- Travis Oliphant --
now gets to work full time on Python scientific computing, as an
employee of Enthought.

> Is there an engineering graphics library that is Numerics/Numpy compatible?

There is Matplotlib for
matlab like numpy graphics, and Chaco for more dynamic 2d graphics. MayaVi and Sage both provide powerful 3d graphics.

> What the community needs right now is a Python distro with enough of a
> numerics and graphics package rolled in to do 90 percent of what is in
> Matlab.

Good idea. This is what both Sage and the Enthought Python Distribution are
shooting for.

> (Are the Python people still hashing out that Numerics/Numpy divide?

No that is done. And the lead developer of Numpy -- Travis Oliphant --
now gets to work full time on Python scientific computing, as an
employee of Enthought.

> Is there an engineering graphics library that is Numerics/Numpy compatible?

There is Matplotlib for
matlab like numpy graphics, and Chaco for more dynamic 2d graphics. MayaVi and Sage both provide powerful 3d graphics.

> What the community needs right now is a Python distro with enough of a
> numerics and graphics package rolled in to do 90 percent of what is in
> Matlab.

Good idea. This is what both Sage and the Enthought Python Distribution are
shooting for.

> (Are the Python people still hashing out that Numerics/Numpy divide?

No that is done. And the lead developer of Numpy -- Travis Oliphant --
now gets to work full time on Python scientific computing, as an
employee of Enthought.

> Is there an engineering graphics library that is Numerics/Numpy compatible?

There is Matplotlib for
matlab like numpy graphics, and Chaco for more dynamic 2d graphics. MayaVi and Sage both provide powerful 3d graphics.

95% of the world's computers (that is to say, the ones running the most popular desktop OS) still do not ship with a Python interpreter

Even if you have years of experience in Matlab, try it, you have nothing to lose. Wherever possible, they made the function calls the same as Matlab's.

If you're considering any sort of numerical or scientific work with Python on MS windows, get the "Enhanced Python Distribution" from Enthought.

http://www.enthought.com/downloads/downloads.htm

It's Python 2.3.3 with all the major numerical and scientific libraries included. The only thing "missing", IMHO, is the excellent matplotlib plotting library.

http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/

Huh?

cPython itself (the standard python) has all the performance sensitive stuff written in C, also Zope, asyncore for asynchronous socket handling (now part of python) is written in C, python is used as a scripting language in a lot of commercial game engines, there's wypython, a wrapper for wxWidget (written in C++), there's Boost.Python, ctypes for working with native c-types in python, numpy, scipy etc. etc.
See http://www.enthought.com/downloads/downloads.htm#d ownload for a python distribution containing a lot of stuff performance intensive stuff where core parts are coded in C.