Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#21

Post by mschaef » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 9:40 PM UTC

danjoc wrote: post #20

>the entire scientific Python stack was essentially relying upon on the “free time” work of only about 30 people—and no one had funding! 30 people? I remember a time when a certain fruit company would enter a field, literally hire all 30 of those guys, and put them behind closed doors. Then in 2 years they'd dominate the field for the next decade. Are these guys turning down offers? Or is the fruit company that poorl…

I don't know who you're talking about, but Orange Micro went out of business in 2004. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Micro )

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#22

Post by carapace » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 9:47 PM UTC

tl;dr:

> "And if you’d like to take action to contribute to project sustainability, consider becoming a NumFOCUS member today."

https://www.numfocus.org/community/donate/

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#23

Post by maliker » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 9:48 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #9

Also a problem for Octave. Remember this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603575 It also stings a little when people say that it's completely obsolete because Matlab itself is "legacy" and we should all be abandoning the language, Octave included... and yet, even though I like numpy and Python and matplotlib and Julia and R, I still find myself reaching for Octave whenever I need a quick visualisation of some…

You might like matplotlib for visualization. It's a Python clone of Matlab's plotting tools. And it's compatible with numpy if you need to do linear algebra or operate on big datasets.

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#24

Post by mschaef » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

It's surprising to me that people are surprised by this.

Even setting aside the fact that the people that can do this work are few in number, the vast majority of people need a way to support themselves and their family. If the number of people that have these skills is low, the subset that is both altruistic enough to donate them for a sufficient period of time and personally able to do so must be vanishingly small. (And the negative feedback a lot of OSS maintainers receive doesn't help.)

Companies have the same issue... there has to be a fairly direct connection between an expenditure (paying developers) and a return on that investment. That can be a very difficult argument to make.

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#25

Post by cwyers » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

maliker wrote: post #23

jordigh wrote: post #9

Also a problem for Octave. Remember this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603575 It also stings a little when people say that it's completely obsolete because Matlab itself is "legacy" and we should all be abandoning the language, Octave included... and yet, even though I like numpy and Python and matplotlib and Julia and R, I still find myself reaching for Octave whenever I need a quick visualisation of some…

You might like matplotlib for visualization. It's a Python clone of Matlab's plotting tools. And it's compatible with numpy if you need to do linear algebra or operate on big datasets.

He mentions matplotlib by name.

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#26

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

devoply wrote: post #16

rjbwork wrote: post #3

We have this problem in the .NET world. Accord.NET is written by a brilliant academic and programmer. It's well written, and has a good API, but it is largely the effort of this one dude, with minor contributions from a smattering of other fellows. Again, it is great in general, but it has bugs and rough edges here or there, and a lot of people don't trust it for production. I wish there was a way for people to be pr…

That's because people don't actually value free things, until they come to depend on them, and then there is no way for that to continue unless they pay. And even then they will pay the bare minimum to keep it going. That's the whole psychology behind open source. Companies could pay for it and those using it can more than afford to do so, but it's free, and apparently it's going to stay that way so why not ride that…

[deleted]

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#27

Post by JPKab » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 9:55 PM UTC

mschaef wrote: post #21

danjoc wrote: post #20

>the entire scientific Python stack was essentially relying upon on the “free time” work of only about 30 people—and no one had funding! 30 people? I remember a time when a certain fruit company would enter a field, literally hire all 30 of those guys, and put them behind closed doors. Then in 2 years they'd dominate the field for the next decade. Are these guys turning down offers? Or is the fruit company that poorl…

I don't know who you're talking about, but Orange Micro went out of business in 2004. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Micro )

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but he means Apple.

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#28

Post by danjoc » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #27

mschaef wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know who you're talking about, but Orange Micro went out of business in 2004. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Micro )

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but he means Apple.

I think he knows. Mike has a 5 digit /. ID :)

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#29

Post by breatheoften » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

danjoc wrote: post #20

>the entire scientific Python stack was essentially relying upon on the “free time” work of only about 30 people—and no one had funding! 30 people? I remember a time when a certain fruit company would enter a field, literally hire all 30 of those guys, and put them behind closed doors. Then in 2 years they'd dominate the field for the next decade. Are these guys turning down offers? Or is the fruit company that poorl…

I wonder too -- Apple should be hiring _somebody_ to build a modern nd-array for swift -- and evolve playgrounds into the ultimate scientific computing environment.

The tools for scientific computing are amazingly scattered - seems like a big company with a modern platform strategy could make a huge impact ...

Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?

#30

Post by hiram112 » Tue, Jun 27, 2017, 10:04 PM UTC

rjbwork wrote: post #3

We have this problem in the .NET world. Accord.NET is written by a brilliant academic and programmer. It's well written, and has a good API, but it is largely the effort of this one dude, with minor contributions from a smattering of other fellows. Again, it is great in general, but it has bugs and rough edges here or there, and a lot of people don't trust it for production. I wish there was a way for people to be pr…

.Net had always had a problem with open source because Microsoft implemented APIs and kept them closed source. Users ended up paying for it via licensing, MSDN, and Visual Studio.

I often see a lot of really mice Java frameworks with a .Net clone which gets much less attention (Hibernate, some of the Spring stuff, etc).

Whole I understand Microsoft is going their best to open up .Net, I'm hesitant to believe they'll ever get to the point where original implementations are done in it, and then ported to other langs - it just has a deservedly bad rep.