YAPC::NA 2014 Science and Perl panel questions

[gizmomathboy]

I thought I would see what people's thoughts are on the following list of questions I will be submitting to panel members prior to the session. I want to have some material that they have spent some time pondering.

Also, are there any questions you would like to ask the panel?

My current list of questions:

* In what way have you used Perl for Scientific programming?

* Is Perl better suited as a glue language or can it be a primary language in science?

* PDL is the canonical science module, along with BioPerl. Are there any others that you recommend or know of?

* I think the killer app for python isn't Numpy/Scipy so much as matplotlib. It steals Matlab's plotting capabilities. Does Perl have something similar? If not, why not?

* Speaking of Python, Python(x,y) does a good job of collecting almost everything you might need to do scientific programming on Windows, in a very Matlab way. Is Matlab the application that we (Perl and Python or anything else) need to compare/compete against?

* Parallel computing is becoming more and more important. You can get a 192 GPUs with Nvidia's Jetson system. Have you used any parallel computing with Perl?
  Follow up questions:
    * What options do you know of and use or recommend?

That's all I can think of at the moment. I will get a list to panel members by June 18th or so.

Please send me any questions you would like to add to the bunch, and if I like them I'll add them for the panel to ponder.

gizmo