From: Sean Surname Date: 2007-11-14T22:53:38+09:00 Subject: Re: enterprise ruby Edwin Van leeuwen wrote: > Cameron McBride wrote: >> On 11/13/07, Sean Surname wrote: >> I have a lot of numerical processing scripts in ruby. Mostly they are >> hybrids of NArray and GSL, with a few of Ara's tricks and C extensions >> thrown in. Since my focus has also been results ASAP, I've had >> little time to generalize / sync these efforts. In addition, I sorely >> miss direct graphics (note: I'm not a fan of how GSL shellsout to >> graph, or many of the other solutions. The closest to what I like is >> the NArray/PGPLOT extension, but PGPLOT itself is better when not used >> directly). > > I also have a half hearted library for my own use, which basically > consist of wrapper/helper methods around rbgsl/gnuplot functions. > >> >> It'd be great to find a few like minded people and work together to >> garner and keep momentum for such a project. Given the small number >> of interested people, and the fact that "like-minded solutions" don't >> seem to overlap between them - I'm skeptical of it happening. However >> unlikely, I still cling to hope... ;) >> > > What would you like to see in such a project. Would you like something > that binds together existing c libraries (gsl/lapack etc) or would you > like to build it all up from scratch? Building these things up from scratch is nearly impossible, even more so than with such a small audience. I know I don't know enough about numerical methods to recreate even a fraction of Matlab/Octave/R, and I bet the number of people who do is vanishingly small. So a non-painful wrapper around existing libraries is probably the only way to go. On the other hand, using Ruby creates opportunities not available in Matlab/Octave. One that I've toyed with is an extension to generate efficient loops over arrays (kind of like pdlpp in Perl, but hopefully less painful). The idea is for loops like "a[...] = complicated_expression(b, c)" to iterate in C without making temporary array copies. An easy-to-use version of this would really set Ruby apart from other numerical languages. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.