https://abaj.ai/tags/figures/Recent content in Figures on Aayush Bajaj's Augmenting InfrastructureHugoen© 2026 Aayush BajajFri, 10 Jul 2026 08:20:25 +1000https://abaj.ai/wiki/ccs/programming/libraries/matplotlib/Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:02:56 +1000https://abaj.ai/wiki/ccs/programming/libraries/matplotlib/<p>matplotlib has a reputation for being clunky, and the reputation is earned exactly by people fighting the <em>wrong</em> api. there are two: a stateful <code>pyplot</code> layer that mimics matlab (&ldquo;draw on whatever was touched last&rdquo;), and an object-oriented core in which every visible thing is an object you hold a reference to. the second is the real library; the first is sugar for one-liners. write <code>fig, ax = plt.subplots()</code> and stay in object land, and most of the clunk evaporates.<span class="margin-note" data-note="official docs: https://matplotlib.org/stable/ — the &#39;anatomy of a figure&#39; poster there is the single best page of documentation in scientific python"> <span class="margin-note-indicator">𐃏</span> </span> all code on this page executed for real; figures were written to <code>/tmp</code> and are described rather than embedded, with true file sizes.</p>