Dear Elliot, Robert, Daniel (just the last one writing) et al.

First of all, let me apologize for being snarky in my previous comments.  I am getting older.

Of course, we cannot hope to muster anything like NUMFocus, that goes without saying.  But, as Daniel suggested, we have different needs in the community, w.r.t., mathematical and numerical issues: two outlooks could be the following.

Some of us, Robert, for example if I am not wrong, want to use libraries that are already out there.  This has a long history in the community: the f2cl project has been instrumental in this respect, and the Matlisp project did bring many well known Fortran libraries into the fold.  The number of "math", "matrix", "statistical", "ML", libraries listed in CLiki is long.

Some of us, myself for example, have, at this point, an... aesthetic approach to the matter (given my day job).  While I have no expectations about the outcome, I like to make proposals for portable and foundational specifications; hence my stance about "first specify, then code".  It is in this spirit that I followed up on my pamphlet "Why you cannot..." (doi:10.5281/zenodo.3759522) with an effort to provide a library implementing the "Language Independent Arithmetic" (LIA) standards (https://github.com/marcoxa/CDR-LIA-SPEC - preliminary code is at https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/cl-lia/cl-lia )

I would welcome any help on this later effort.  The rest may follow...

A note on numpy.  In general, my feeling is that most of it is already in the guts of Common Lisp.  Yet, it will be useful to check its API.  As it would be useful to study more recent APIs for math/numerical libraries, most notably, Julia.

All the best

Marco

On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 3:22 AM Elliott Johnson <elliott@elliottjohnson.net> wrote:

Robert,

I must say that I am a big fan of your work on asdf and in awe of your professional and academic career.

I agree with your assessment that numpy and the entirety of NUMFocus would be well outside the scope of the current CL community.

In an effort to conserve the momentum of this thread and channel the spirit of my time at Franz Inc, I'd like to emphasize that a lot can be accomplished by a small team with clear goals and roles.

I hope that if a such project arises that I can be of assistance.

Best regards,

Elliott

Sent from my T-Mobile 5G Device

-------- Original message --------

From: Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.net>

Date: 4/11/23 1:07 PM (GMT-08:00)

To: Discussion list for Common Lisp professionals <pro@common-lisp.net>

Subject: Re: Numpy and Common Lisp?

I don't mean to rain on the parade, but the development and maintenance of numpy consumes a level of resources that is simply beyond the capacity of the CL community to muster.

The NUMFocus project, a non-profit, supports this and other numerical computation projects (most, but not exclusively python), drawing on substantial amounts of corporate sponsorship.

I urge you to cast your eyes on this NumFOCUS sponsors list before thinking that our community could even begin to tackle this task: https://numfocus.org/sponsors

On 11 Apr 2023, at 7:14, Steven Nunez wrote:

There's also the Lisp-Stat ecosystem, if you don't already know about it. Data-frame, array-operations and LLA (Lisp Linear Algebra) cover much of numpy's functionality; at least enough to get significant work done.

On Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 07:45:50 PM GMT+8, Elliott Johnson <elliott@elliottjohnson.net> wrote:

FYI -  there appears to be a library called numcl that was written to cover numpy's functionality.

   https://github.com/numcl/numcl

I've yet to try it, but thought I'd pass along the link.

Regards,

Elliott Johnson

-------- Original message --------

From: Raymond Wiker <rwiker@gmail.com>

Date: 4/11/23 3:53 AM (GMT-08:00)

To: Discussion list for Common Lisp professionals <pro@common-lisp.net>

Subject: Re: Numpy and Common Lisp?

There’s cl-ana, which may be a useful substitute in some cases… or april, possibly.

cliki.net cl-ana

cliki.net april

If you specifically want numpy, it may be possible to have Common Lisp talking to python.

On 11 Apr 2023, at 08:41, Marco Antoniotti <marco.antoniotti@unimib.it> wrote:

Hi Michael

I am all for it.  But, as I said, I am an academic (and a cat).

Should we (as in "a bunch of common lispers", most of whom with day jobs) want to do something like that, how would you want to proceed?  Note that I have been part of many past failures.

All the best

Marco

On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 1:01 AM Michael Bentley <michael@stray-labs.com> wrote:

IMHO, it'd be easier and effective to band up together and FIRST write a proper API specification and THEN implement it in CL.

I agree.  Here’s the API specification for NumPy: https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/index.html#reference

Looks rather intimidating. Less intimidating though, than doing the FFI dance, though.