8 ms·
Yes, but from their perspective, it's an implementation detail. LAPACK could have been written in assembly language or APL, and their Python code would work jus
by ced 11y ago
Yes, but from their perspective, it's an implementation detail. LAPACK could have been written in assembly language or APL, and their Python code would work just as well.
Python/Matlab/IDL are important because it is easier to quickly write correct code than in C++/Fortran.
- dekhn 11y agoRight, but if you say people "use" something, it's disingenous (for a scientific paper) to imply that implementation details don't matter. Had I written the paper (I'm a scientist, I work with astro data sets at times, and manage Python wrappers for Fortran and C++ libraries) I would have calculated this based on instructions executed, not lines of user-facing code. After all, if the code the astro people called was Pure Python, they wouldn't use python, as it would be too slow.
- agumonkey 11y agoReminds me of the 'made in X' fallacy. #!/usr/bin/env python from subprocess import Popen Popen("/usr/bin/some-fortran-binary") print("Once again python saves the day.")
- math_and_stuff 11y agoActually, many optimized BLAS/LAPACK implementations are not written in Fortran. Many are a mix of C and assembly exposed through the standard Fortran interface.