OT: why do people use python when it is slow?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Wed, 2015-10-14 at 14:48 +0000, John Colvin via Digitalmars-d-learn
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 14 October 2015 at 14:32:00 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> > On Tuesday, 13 October 2015 at 23:26:14 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
> > wrote:
> > > https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Python-so-popular-despite-being-so-s
> > > low
> > > Andrei suggested posting more widely.
> > 
> > I was just writing some R code yesterday after playing around 
> > with D for a couple weeks. I accomplished more in an afternoon 
> > of R coding than I think I had in like a month's worth of 
> > playing around with D. The same is true for python.
> 
> As someone who uses both D and Python every day, I find that - 
> once you are proficient in both - initial productivity is higher 
> in Python and then D starts to overtake as a project gets larger 
> and/or has stricter requirements. I hope never to have to write 
> anything longer than a thousand lines in Python ever again.

The thing about Python is NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, IPython,
Jupyter, GNU Radio. The data science, bioinformatics, quant, signal
provessing, etc. people do not give a sh!t which language they used,
what they want is to get their results as fast as possible. Most of
them do not write programs that are to last, they are effectively throw
away programs. This leads them to Python (or R) and they are not really
interested in learning anything else.

The fact that NumPy sort of sucks in terms of performance, isn't
noticed by them
as they get their results "fast enough" and a lot faster than
sequential Python. The fact that if they used Chapel or even D for
their compute intensive code they would rapidly discover that NumPy
sort of sucks never really occurs to these people as they are focussed
on the results not the means of achieving them.

Polyglot Python/D or Python/Chapel with Matplotlib is the way to go.
But that really requires a D replacement for Pandas.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 181 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.puremagic.com/pipermail/digitalmars-d-learn/attachments/20151014/ce14818f/attachment.sig>