SciRuby: Science and Matrix Libraries For Ruby 138
Aciel writes "Ruby has long been popular in the web/business community, while Python dominates the scientific community. One new project seeks to bring balance to the force: SciRuby. We've already introduced a linear algebra library called NMatrix (currently alpha status). There's at least one fellowship available for students interested in working on the project this summer."
Tell me one thing this brings to the table (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems like a terrible idea. What could scientific computing with Ruby possibly offer that SciPy doesn't already? Way to split the potential work force guys. If you want to develop a scientific computing library for a rich dynamic language, then contribute to SciPy. What a wasted effort.
Non-story (Score:4, Insightful)
The fellowship is a summer long with only a $1,500 stipend. The most recent commit [github.com] is from December 1st, 2011. The wiki and issue tracker appear to be similarly inactive. Even if the project does something, it probably won't do much; contrast it with numpy commits [github.com] which are recent and numerous.
This story should never have been accepted. There are a million minor projects like this that similarly aren't newsworthy enough to discuss.
Re:"while Python dominates the scientific communit (Score:4, Insightful)
Excel isn't a language.
You know that and I know that. But I've worked for physicists, chemists and biologists, and believe me, that little detail doesn't stop them one little bit. A little birdie tells me that it's even worse in the social sciences.
MatLab might beat Python, but it's been losing ground.
Very slowly, and in the fields I've worked in, invariably to R.
R? I love R, but it's not a general purpose language and very few scientists know how to use it.
Those two little details don't stop scientists either.
In my experience, scientists will do just about anything to convince themselves that they're not actually programming, if only to avoid pesky annoyances like source code control. The less it looks like a programming language, the better.
Re:Do we really need this? (Score:4, Insightful)
During one of the interviews, the guy hit the nail on the head:
A lot of people don't write Ruby when they're coding in Ruby.
In reality, Ruby practices make a lot of sense under the context of the language and when you get comfortable with them then you've reached a position when you can take advantage of what Ruby has to offer -- mainly brevity (without sacrificing clarity) and flexibility (crazy introspection and meta-programming capabilities).
There are a lot of things in the Ruby universe that suck (the interpreter can be quirky, gem management can bit flaky, documentation could be better), the language proper is not one of them.
However, (surprise, surprise) like with anything else in life, you've got to weigh the pros and cons and find something that suits you and/or your needs.
Ruby suits a lot of people's needs, that's why it exists, obviously -- so no, we're not where we were 20 years ago, not by a looong shot.
Re:Matlab (and possibly R) vs any other language (Score:4, Insightful)
What people fail to understand is that OOP is a bad paradigm for numerical computing. It's ill-suited to vectorization and parallelization.
Re:"while Python dominates the scientific communit (Score:4, Insightful)
It cuts both ways. I'm a geneticist, and it's painful having to work with tech guys who don't know the first thing about even basic biology, never mind genetics.
It's the same here on Slashdot. I always cringe every time I load up the comments on a story about genetics or evolution, because I know there'll be a slew of ignorant comments modded up to +5 insightful. At least most scientists know their limitations at programming, but the same cannot be said with regard to non-engineering subjects for many engineers, who feel themselves qualified to comment on just about any topic under the sun, regardless of their lack of knowledge.