Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Python's Name, Icy, and Continuum Analytics

Today I Learned:
1) Python, the computer language, was not named after the animal. It was named after Monty Python's Flying Circus.

2) ...about an alternative to ImageJ called Icy. It's also an open-source, easily-extensible image analysis program written in Java (or at least something that runs on the JVM). It seems to be written with even more of an eye than ImageJ towards linking with other kinds of programming -- you can write scripts for it in Python and javascript, and it has some sort of native compatibility with Matlab. The cutest thing is that it has a tab that appears to be literally an emulated instance of ImageJ, so that you'll always have ImageJ at your fingertips if you want it. Icy does seem quite sluggish and a little rough around the edges, though, so I don't see myself using it a ton.

3) Anaconda, the python scientific computing environment manager, was developed by and is owned by a for-profit company, Continuum Analytics. This despite Anaconda being free and open-source, and being the only major project of the company. It seems Continuum Analytics' monetization scheme is essentially training programs for companies. I hope this catches on, because it's a very nice system (once again, declaring no conflicts of interest here).

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