Python For Scientists and Engineers: Recent Class

Steve and I took a three day class that ended up being a survey of what is available for scientists and engineers using Python. The instructor did point out a good number sites to look at for scientific software bundles in Python.

One the most interesting sites pointed to was Python(x,y) which has bundled a number of tools (mostly python) into one package that was right up our alley on the MCATK project we are working. Python(x,y) is free and all the packages bundled under it are free-ware.

Python(x,y) has downloads for two platforms so far. Windows and Ubuntu. I have downloaded the Windows version (full setup) onto two different machines and it has installed perfectly and easily.

Python(x,y) provides a small window with menus and buttons that serve up the various packages it offers. Some of the packages Eclipse, Qt, MayaVi, SciTE, IDLE, gnuplot, Python, and IPython. There are Python modules for numpy, scipy, numexpr, sympy, matplotlib, pylab, and VTK to name a few. There is easy access to documentation for all of these packages and more.

You can easily launch Eclipse from the Python(x,y) window and turn around and launch the IPython command line window too. Also in the bundle is the Spyder the interactive software development environment.

For us one nice thing is that Eclipse already has plug-ins for CDT(C++), Python, and PyDev (unit tester). This way since we already do development with Eclipse and C++ then we can now easily do any Python work within the same IDE with unit testing. Unfortunately it is only available for Windows and Ubuntu at this time.

Also downloaded is the Photran plugin for Fortran development under Eclipse. Not that we need that.

Another site pointed out to us was EnThought which has some prebundled Python tools. The bundles are not free but all the packages under them are free. So you could download them yourself if you did not want to pay. The site is a great resource for scientific computing.

All in all it seems that Python would be fine choice for many scientific computation needs. Less so for the HPC we are doing at LANL but it certainly come in handy as another tool in our toolbox. One suggested use of Python and all the available tools was as a replacement for MatLab since all the Python tools are free. Definitely a possibility especially for students.

Recently, Neopythonic (Guido van Rossum) has an interesting post about Python in the Scientific World. Check it out.