Python, ROOT, and MINUIT integration?

Question

I'm a modest graduate student in a high energy particle physics department. With an unfounded distaste for C/C++ and a founded love of python, I have resorted to python for my data analysis so far (just the easy stuff) and am about to attempt backing python scripts against ROOT libraries and, particularly, utilize MINUIT for some parameter minimization.

As well as asking if anyone has any tips for the installation and usage of these, I wondered if it was worth it to even attempt it or just to slip into the "norm" of using C/C++, or if things like pyminuit are usable. Or do you think I could wrap entire C/C++ scripts into python code to make use of my existing self-written analysis methods (I have no wrapper experience as of yet). Sorry for the vagueness; I'm headed into a great unknown that far outweighs my current experience.

Answer 1

I think that you will get more ideas at Root Talk.

Answer 2

It's not really an answer per se, but coming from someone in a similar situation (grad student in physics who loves Python ;-) it would be fabulous if you can come up with a good interface between Python and popular C/C++ physics software like ROOT, especially if you can make it compatible with Numpy/Scipy where applicable. As I'm sure you know, Python is a whole lot easier to work with than C or C++, especially because the interpreter allows us to test things out quickly and determine algorithms by trial-and-error a lot more efficiently than with C or C++; it's also great not to have to worry about things like memory management. Really, the only reason that scientists are still stuck on Fortran and C is that nobody's had the time to wrap the large libraries of existing code into newer, more user-friendly languages.

Answer 3

You are aware of pyROOT, right?

Never tried it myself, so I don't know how it might stack up against your needs.