Compare and Contrast using Enthought and installing individual libraries

Question

Compare and contrast using Enthought and installing individual libraries. I am not clear on the benefits each option offers.

Answer 1

Enthought allows for a lot of scientific and mathematic libraries to be installed through the ease of a UI. This however, means you could be installing a good deal of libraries that are irrelevant to your needs. It does however come with a suite for visualizing your code.

Although it takes more time, going out and looking at different releases of specific libraries that are more centric to your requirements would probably be more beneficial. Mainly NumPy, SciPy and PyTables would be large ones to go and install yourself.

In the end, it's all up to you if you want to download bulk with a lot of good stuff easily... with some unnecessary baggage; or, you could research and install specific libraries to fit your needs so you know exactly what to use, and how... for 'cheaper' on a data level anyways.

Personally, I'd probably install Enthought.

On an unrelated note, this question isn't horribly fit for this site. --> https://stackoverflow.com/faq#dontask Mentions that "What's your favorite_____.... type questions are not very good.

Answer 2

It all depends on which python libraries you are hoping to use. My own experience on OS X is that most python modules that require compilation work, but I've had issues with them occasionally. Especially if I need to match the architecture of the system Python which is compiled as universal binary. Honestly, I just use Enthought these days, especially since I'm academic and the license is free- they were even nice enough to give me access to the 64-bit installers when I asked them nicely.

I also was happy with my decision when a boss decided he wanted to move my code to run on some Windows boxes... boy was I glad I could just point them to the single Enthought installer rather than having to hold their hand through installing python + external libraries.

In summary, Enthought may or may not be free for you... if it is then it almost certainly worth using EVEN if you are developing on a linux distro with a good package repository. If you have to pay for Enthought then you'll have to evaluate whether it's worth the cost, just remember to factor in the cost of your own time.

If you cite specific packages you want to use and your platform I can give you a much better guess as to how big an advantage Enthought might be to you.