[Numpy-discussion] Numeric3

[Gary Strangman]

> So while I agree that having plain array access is needed for quick and dirty 
> one-off things, basically anything beyond 50-100 lines of code is probably 
> best written with a tiny bit of design.  Those 10 minutes invested thinking 
> about a design sketch will pay for themselves many times over.

I guess this points out different needs and abilities. I unfortunately 
need to do way too many things just once (ahhh, if I only had the luxury 
of doing the same or similar analyses over and over). And though I 
certainly agree that including a bit of design can be a good thing, for my 
abilities this usually boils down to more like 10 hours rather than 10 
minutes of designing, re-designing, debugging the design, adding to the 
design etc. I'm usually happy with it when I'm done, but don't get to 
reuse it more than 1 or 2 times.

To get back to the topic at hand, though, I'd be perfectly satisfied with 
both interfaces (functions and methods). I just worry that the method 
interface would make the multiarray object sufficiently complex and 
unwieldy to (a) induce a performance hit, or (b) prevent the multiarray 
object from getting into the python core. But, maybe I just misunderstand 
the nature of the code that would underly the method interface.

-best
Gary