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minitech · 2020-12-23 06:50:51+00:00

numpy doesn’t get sent to the client if you use it on the server.

> JavaScript frontends are becoming unnecessarily bloated

tchaffee | karma 2741 | avg karma 1.82 · | 2020-05-31 15:05:51+00:00

Ah ok, by "numpy wouldn't work in JS" you meant something like it wouldn't be popular or as loved. Makes more sense now.

netheril96 | karma 2460 | avg karma 2.23 · | 2015-11-18 00:43:51+00:00

To do that you first need to have a way of extending JavaScript with C and/or Fortran. No way numpy can be implemented in pure js or python without being excruciatingly slow.

SavantIdiot | karma 4263 | avg karma 2.96 · | 2021-10-08 17:05:36

This was posted multiple times on HN over the past 5 years.

And every time I see it, I cry that JavaScript doesn't have something like numpy.

numpy is just so damn logical and fast (and comprehensive!) that i don't consider myself a python programmer, i'm a numpy user.

EDIT: (removed complaint). That said: this looks like a good foundation for someone to use for implementing a fully featured numpy in JS.

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lostmsu | karma 5641 | avg karma 1.11 · | 2022-01-11 12:01:11

They must be doing something else with numpy as Python has a generic API, that allows direct access to data of numpy array-like structures: Buffer Protocol https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/buffer.html

Derbasti | karma 3621 | avg karma 3.03 · | 2011-09-13 07:02:38+00:00

But numpy is using LAPACK as its backend…

newen | karma 520 | avg karma 0.59 · | 2020-10-28 20:18:34

Numpy has a very poor API compared to Julia, Matlab, Mathematica, R. That’s just me comparing to the ones I know. It’s a mishmash of methods and functions, in-place operations and non-modifying operations, confusing indexing and broadcasting API. There are much better things available for array manipulation.

weberc2 | karma 4751 | avg karma 1.26 · | 2019-04-30 17:32:59+00:00

Not everything is amenable to numpy and it's pretty easy to make performance worse by throwing numpy at every problem. For example, if your array contains Python objects that are part of an operation, you've likely just introduced a significant performance regression. Worse, there's no way to detect these regressions except to have performance tests. Please, don't understate GIL issues.

ok123456 | karma 2762 | avg karma 2.22 · | 2023-11-22 12:31:19

- everyone using numpy

cdavid | karma 2079 | avg karma 2.78 · | 2013-08-11 15:51:29+00:00

numpy allows you to do some pretty low level stuff (like creating buffer from a raw pointer), which GAE wants to avoid for obvious security issues. Same rationale as why ctypes (parts of the stdlib) is not available.

I have never used numpy on GAE, but I would suspect some of it is not enabled for those reasons.

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dreamcompiler | karma 15279 | avg karma 3.54 · | 2021-08-02 13:08:43

>Either implement numpy equivalent on your own or half of your code is data massaging data between libraries

I haven't tested this but here you go:

https://github.com/numcl/numcl

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rspeer | karma 5317 | avg karma 3.24 · | 2014-03-16 18:10:20+00:00

> NumPy is a crappily designed library

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

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deshpand | karma 35 | avg karma 1.09 · | 2020-02-11 14:59:20+00:00

< numba and numpy do not interact well at all

Can you please elaborate on this? Not challenging you but trying to understand the nuances.

Numba tutorial says otherwise: https://numba.pydata.org/numba-doc/dev/user/5minguide.html "Numba likes NumPy functions"

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Scarblac | karma 7663 | avg karma 3.2 · | 2018-08-24 12:57:09+00:00

In particular, does this mean Javascript has access to Numpy? Sounds unbelievable, but would be extremely cool.

shoyer | karma 1310 | avg karma 4.89 · | 2015-05-27 06:31:38+00:00

As an occasional numpy contributor, I would call this a bug.

kgeist | karma 3004 | avg karma 3.25 · | 2023-03-13 02:24:38

Doesn't work because there's no numpy installed in the node image:

>ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'numpy'

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chimeracoder | karma 20702 | avg karma 3.63 · | 2011-12-19 19:19:54

Out of curiosity, what are you doing for which arrays are more suited than NumPy?

I've been using NumPy for a while now, and I've literally never had a reason to use array.array where NumPy arrays have worked.

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bvrmn | karma 649 | avg karma 1.41 · | 2024-06-17 08:46:51

For numpy applications you have to always box a value to get a new python string. It quite far from fast.

Twirrim | karma 9819 | avg karma 4.87 · | 2024-03-18 20:26:51

So rather than spend 10-20 minutes reading about numpy, the author wrote 3 other implementations...?

The fact that they ran the C code without the optimisation flags and compared it that way makes me think Javascript was what they actually wanted to write this one in anyway.

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short_sells_poo | karma 1906 | avg karma 3.17 · | 2021-10-07 16:15:57

Thank you! So this looks interesting but it seems like there's no easy way to share numpy arrays?

The main use case for a language other than python is a more robust codebase but also performance. We need to be able to efficiently ship lots of large arrays between the languages and the Rust-Python interop supports zero copy arrays for example.

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