Please fill out our SymPy code generation survey

[Sam Brockie]

Hi SymPy community,

Who am I?

I'm Sam Brockie and I have been hired as a postdoctoral researcher in Jason Moore's lab at TU Delft to work on SymPy's code generation (see here: https://groups.google.com/u/0/g/sympy/c/YC4PHG5etaA/m/IXRCdcwHBwAJ) as part of the CZI grant (see here: https://groups.google.com/g/sympy/c/vYsavewGj1w/m/CQKTSznPAgAJ).

What is code generation?

For those not familiar with what code generation is, here's a quick explanation:

Oftentimes SymPy users will need to evaluate their symbolic expressions using numeric values. In simple cases, SymPy's `subs` and `evalf` methods can be used to substitute numeric values into symbolic expressions. However, this approach is slow. If your expressions are very large, or the numeric evaluations need to be done many times, then a different approach is required. Code generation is the process of automatically converting symbolic expressions into dedicated computer code for their numeric evaluation. SymPy offers a range of code generation tools supporting the simple creating of numeric Python functions equivalent to a symbolic expression (`lambdify`) and spanning to the creating, compiling, wrapping, and/or importing of efficient numeric C/Fortran/<other language> callables. Code generation can also be used to generate other code, such as LaTeX representations of SymPy objects.

More info can be found in the docs here: https://docs.sympy.org/latest/reference/public/codegeneration/index.html, https://docs.sympy.org/latest/modules/numeric-computation.html

The survey

In order to get a better idea of the community's needs related to SymPy's code generation, we are running a short survey. Please take a moment to fill it out. It should only take five minutes. Even if you are new to SymPy, or haven't used SymPy's code generation much, we'd still really appreciate hearing from you.

The survey can be found here: https://forms.gle/F5Ek6yQkH5fXPNYK6

What happens next?

The survey will remain open for the next two weeks, after which time I'll compile and share the results. These will then be used to inform which aspects of SymPy's code generation will be worked on.

Sam