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Thanks for sharing! I often look at packages like this by use. Large, heavily utilized, corporate usage are indicative of a healthy project to me. What metric

by tomrod 5y ago

Thanks for sharing! I often look at packages like this by use. Large, heavily utilized, corporate usage are indicative of a healthy project to me. What metrics do other HN readers use for evaluating projects like this?

turminal 5y ago
I really hate to use this metric, but the language used is often a good indicator of what qualities and values the project authors find important.
- not2b 5y ago
  For Python libraries that do significant computation, the actual code is often in C, C++, or Fortran with the Python part just serving to tie the libraries together.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    Fortran???
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      If I understand correctly, numpy was (still is?) a wrapper around Fortran libraries such as linpack.
    - cm2187 5y ago
      I was told recently to use some Math library for .net that was clearly a wrapper around a Fortran library. All method names were a 4 characters hex, I think the same for parameter names. I just refused.
      - syockit 5y ago
        That's probably a wrapper for BLAS/LAPACK. The majority of BLAS/LAPACK implementations use the original functions names as the reference implementation found on Netlib. The names are not in hex, but acronyms and short forms e.g. GEMV refers to double general matrix-vector multiplication. What did you end up using as alternative? In C++ for example, there's a template based library (Eigen) that fuses multiple operations and gives you some speedup compared to the usual libraries, at the cost of very long compilation times. For C#, I imagine there could be some library that does the same thing in JIT instead.
        cm2187 5y ago
        It was the Nag library for .net [1]. What I really wanted to use is Extreme Optimization, but couldn't get the company to buy a license. In the end I realised I could express the problem as a linear program and used Google OR Tools and LPSolve. [1] https://www.nag.com/numeric/dt/nagdotnet_dtw02/html/contents.html https://www.nag.com/numeric/dt/nagdotnet_dtw02/html/contents...
    - TimTheTinker 5y ago
      Like it or not, Fortran is a very fast and memory efficient compiled language with compilers supporting most platforms and many open source libraries written in it. These days, it survives mostly as an authoring language for math and statistical libraries.
Frotag 5y ago
The issues tab. Mostly to check for any critical / common pitfalls (by searching for issues with the most comments) and to get a sense of how battle-hardened the repo is (how many issues have been raised).

by tomrod 5y ago

turminal 5y ago

I really hate to use this metric, but the language used is often a good indicator of what qualities and values the project authors find important.

not2b 5y ago
For Python libraries that do significant computation, the actual code is often in C, C++, or Fortran with the Python part just serving to tie the libraries together.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  Fortran???
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    If I understand correctly, numpy was (still is?) a wrapper around Fortran libraries such as linpack.
  - cm2187 5y ago
    I was told recently to use some Math library for .net that was clearly a wrapper around a Fortran library. All method names were a 4 characters hex, I think the same for parameter names. I just refused.
    - syockit 5y ago
      That's probably a wrapper for BLAS/LAPACK. The majority of BLAS/LAPACK implementations use the original functions names as the reference implementation found on Netlib. The names are not in hex, but acronyms and short forms e.g. GEMV refers to double general matrix-vector multiplication. What did you end up using as alternative? In C++ for example, there's a template based library (Eigen) that fuses multiple operations and gives you some speedup compared to the usual libraries, at the cost of very long compilation times. For C#, I imagine there could be some library that does the same thing in JIT instead.
      - cm2187 5y ago
        It was the Nag library for .net [1]. What I really wanted to use is Extreme Optimization, but couldn't get the company to buy a license. In the end I realised I could express the problem as a linear program and used Google OR Tools and LPSolve. [1] https://www.nag.com/numeric/dt/nagdotnet_dtw02/html/contents.html https://www.nag.com/numeric/dt/nagdotnet_dtw02/html/contents...
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    Like it or not, Fortran is a very fast and memory efficient compiled language with compilers supporting most platforms and many open source libraries written in it. These days, it survives mostly as an authoring language for math and statistical libraries.

Frotag 5y ago

The issues tab. Mostly to check for any critical / common pitfalls (by searching for issues with the most comments) and to get a sense of how battle-hardened the repo is (how many issues have been raised).