Duck columns in astropy Table

This is a big picture long term issue to integrate the idea of mixin columns with numpy duck arrays, perhaps resulting in a new offspring “duck columns”. (I never loved the name “mixin column” because of the overloading with mixin class, but never found anything better until today 😈 ).

A tiny code issue that illustrates this is discussed here, i.e. how to decide if an input data object needs to be coerced into a numpy array. Is it good enough already or do we pull out the np.asarray() hammer?

[taldcroft]

I can bikeshed with the best of them… I actually had to think for a second on the original phrase that “duck typing” refers to. For me and maybe many Python users (esp. non-English), “duck typing” is now just a two-word phrase that has its own well-established meaning. So “mimic” is then using a different word that most non-native-English speakers won’t know which means the same as “duck” (which they might know and has established meaning).

[pllim]

Duck is cute. 🦆 Mimic reminds me of a scifi horror movie. 😱