Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin • Hacker News Board

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#41

Post by kyllo » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 8:48 PM UTC

jofer wrote: post #14

kyllo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, anyone who has installed numpy, matplotlib, etc has probably noticed that you need a Fortran compiler to build the native extensions...

Actually, you don't. A fortran compiler is optional, and used mostly for f2py and I think(?) for the LAPACK bindings. (The fortran bindings are more efficient than the C bindings for reasons I don't remember at the moment.) Numpy's (and matplotlib's, actually) core is written in C. Scipy is a different story, however. A lot of scipy's internals are written in fortran. That having been said, fortran is a _very_ nice l…

Yeah maybe I was thinking of scipy. I've only built numpy and scipy from source once, and it was to install scikit-learn, which has both of them as a dependency. I had to install gfortran first.

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#42

Post by rhizome » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 8:55 PM UTC

kyllo wrote: post #40

rhizome wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of taste. How many verbal languages can you speak and write? Computer languages aren't special, and polyglotism is really only a hallmark of CS-mindedness, which is actually yet another form of hipsterism. It's not a real thing, and the language that is best is the language that the programmer is most productive.

That really, really depends on what the language is being used for. There are a lot of desirable qualities and features, and no single language has even close to all of them. With the vast, vast number of different programming paradigms that are effective for solving different problems, as well the various resource constraints of different computing platforms, a certain degree of "polyglotism" is absolutely necessary…

That really, really depends on what the language is being used for.

The work of stats guru Jeff Sagarin.

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#43

Post by kyllo » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:34 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #42

kyllo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really, really depends on what the language is being used for. There are a lot of desirable qualities and features, and no single language has even close to all of them. With the vast, vast number of different programming paradigms that are effective for solving different problems, as well the various resource constraints of different computing platforms, a certain degree of "polyglotism" is absolutely necessary…

That really, really depends on what the language is being used for. The work of stats guru Jeff Sagarin.

How many people in the world need to do the work of stats guru Jeff Sagarin? Is everyone else a hipster?

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#44

Post by rhizome » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 8:24 AM UTC

kyllo wrote: post #43

rhizome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really, really depends on what the language is being used for. The work of stats guru Jeff Sagarin.

How many people in the world need to do the work of stats guru Jeff Sagarin? Is everyone else a hipster?

Now that I reread, I see that your comment was less a recommendation for Fortran-using Jeff Sagarin as it was a so-what digression. I took the bait, mea culpa.